


Width of a Circle

by May_Shepard



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Case Fic, Depiction of Suicide, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Evil Mary Morstan, Face Paint, Falling In Love, Frequent References to David Bowie's Work of the 1970s, Glam Aesthetic, If You Care About That Sort of Thing, Inspired by David Bowie, Inspired by Music, John is in Med School, John's POV, M/M, Makeup, Mary is the Villain that Canon Mary Deserved to Be, Mentions of Underage Sexual Abuse, Messed Up Sex, Negative Depiction of Drug Use, Novel-length fic, POV Third Person, Past Abuse, Past Tense, Period-Typical Fluid Sexuality, Period-Typical Gender Fluidity, Period-Typical Homophobia, Please Heed Trigger Warnings, Positive Depiction of Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Behaviour Shaped by Past Abuse, Sherlock is a Glam Singer, Tender Sex, This is the 1970s, Wait Here's Some More Bad Stuff / Trigger Warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:20:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 72,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/May_Shepard/pseuds/May_Shepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1974. When John Watson, doctor-in-training, wanders into a seedy bar, he has no idea there's a band about to play, much less that his life is going to change completely. When Sherlock Holmes hits the stage and reads John like a book during his performance, John knows he's found something amazing. But Sherlock's history with a brilliant madman could threaten not only the way he and John see each other, but their lives, their sanity, and the safety of everyone in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to the glitterati for enthusiastically embracing this idea, beta reading, and general awesomeness: Dollie, Queenie, Hope, Heimish, JL4L, Moni, and Rose. Unconditional love is hard to come by; having 7 amazing friends who wholeheartedly give of themselves as freely and constantly as you lot makes me feel like the luckiest human on the earth planet. 
> 
> For LiLo, thanks for your super sharp beta powers! 
> 
> And for everyone on Tumblr who loves Johnlock and David Bowie: mwah!

 

* * *

 

**The Boy in the Bright Blue Jeans**

 

 _And he was all right, the band was all together_  
_Yes he was all right, the song went on forever_  
_And he was awful nice_  
_Really quite paradise,_  
_And he sang all night long_

 

John took his second double scotch to a table by a window in the filthy bar and tucked himself into the corner. He'd come here because it was far from Barts, geographically and stylistically, not the kind of place young doctors in training liked to frequent.

Everything in the bar was black: the walls, painted wooden floors, the furniture. It had a scuffed, dusty appearance in the last of the summer evening light slanting through the windows, like it was all straining toward an early grave. A perfect place to get properly drunk with almost no risk his colleagues would find him.

He was ridiculously out of place, that much was clear. The bartender was a twee young thing, male-ish but definitely not masculine in the classic sense, wearing so much shimmery eye shadow and warm red lipstick that it was all up in the air.

John didn't follow fashion or music much. He'd spent the end of the 60s and the first part of the 70s in the army, and now he was busy with med school. He'd emerged from his time in service into a different world, no longer invested in revolution and radical change, but in self-indulgence and a form of decadence he didn't fully understand.

He was dimly aware of the bright costumes and ambiguous sexuality kids were flaunting these days. When did young people get so bold? He was only twenty-eight, for God's sake, but he could never imagine wearing his tastes out in public like they did.

"Another?" The kid called out to him from behind the bar. He hefted the bottle of Bell's and waved it at him: cheeky.

John nodded, and scooted his glass across the table top as the bartender came over. The bartender smiled shyly at the glass as he poured, not meeting John's gaze but giving John a chance to stare at him openly. The two he'd already had loosened John's limbs, let him start forgetting why he came here in the first place. Nothing specific: just boredom, and a dull suspicion that his life would disappoint him in the end.

"Quiet in here." His voice was throaty, maybe a bit flirty. He could afford to be. No need to keep up appearances. He would almost certainly never come here again.

The kid nodded. "Yeah. No one really shows until the band is ready to go. You staying for that?"

"Band?"

The kid moved to the corkboard behind John and pulled down a flyer.

The band's name took up most of the sheet: _The Sussex Vampires_ , in hand drawn letters resembling red lightning bolts outlined in black. In fine print at the bottom: _You know where. You know when. You know why._

John looked up at the kid. "So, here, and soonish?"

"You'll know why," the kid said, grinning. "You'll probably think I'm just saying this, but they are really good. Worth checking out if only for their lead. He's—well he might never go anywhere. Most of them don't. He deserves to, though."

The kid poured him another glass. John didn't object. He was most of the way to being very drunk and in no mood to go easy. "So, what has he got then? What's so special about this lead singer?" He was slurring already. No matter.

The kid laughed and looked up at the ceiling like he was willing himself into a dream. "Well, he's not just a singer. He plays guitar too, and he's good at it. But that's not it. He's got this ego, this out there ego. So big it belongs on a stage a lot bigger than this one. It needs to be worshipped by thousands. Millions, even."

John let himself drift into the easy intimacy of the conversation. This was the reason he drank in bars, this type of talk. Big conversations about things that didn't matter to him at all.

"So what happens if he isn't? Worshipped by millions, I mean."

He regretted the words immediately. He meant it to be deep, to meet the kid at his own depth, but it came out like something an asshole grown up would say, crapping on the kid's point. It was all his own garbage coming to the surface, really. Too many years of not getting what he wanted, not being able to be himself, whatever that meant.

The kid didn't look put out, though. He was watching John with something like careful consideration, examining him as if seeing him for the first time. His smile shifted to a smirk. "There's more than one way to get famous," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The kid shrugged as he moved back toward the bar. "Some people just can't help themselves. You'll see."

What seemed like ages later, John nursed another scotch while three skinny boys in jeans and t-shirts came in and busied themselves with setting up their equipment. At first he wished he had a book or something to pretend to stare at, but his buzz soon melted any reservations he had about watching as they worked. They looked almost identical to each other, hair coaxed into odd shapes with hairspray or sugar water. They hardly spoke as they plugged in speakers, carried in the drum kit, and messed about with their instruments.

John wondered which one was the big ego the bartender had talked about. They all seemed to put in equal work on the setup.

The next thing he knew, he wasn't alone in the bar any more. First to arrive were a group of six young women in everything from floor-length dresses to men's suits. Next came a set of boys in black, two of them kilted, all of them in capes, hair swept back in neat waves. At some point two very sexy older women asked if they could share his table. He'd been exchanging small talk with them for fifteen minutes before he realised they were queens. It made him feel that much cooler, that they wanted to talk to him.

By the time the band seemed to be finally finished with a thoroughly annoying sound check, the bar was packed with every kind of fantastical creature John had ever imagined, along with a few more normal looking types like himself. He wondered what on earth the band could be doing that would draw this diverse a crowd.

The lights dimmed, and a round of applause and murmurs of approval filled the space. John stood. He'd been in his chair for too long, and his leg throbbed.

The three boys from earlier came back out. They'd changed their street clothes for an assortment of body-skimming one-pieces that looked like uniforms from the world's most lascivious space program. Each of them smiled at the audience as they took their places, one beside the drum kit, another beside the bass, and the third at the old piano. A lustrous black guitar sat atop a bar stool, centre stage, a dim spotlight illuminating it, and the microphone stand.

So the big ego had yet to arrive, John thought. He caught himself shifting from one foot to the other with anticipation. He had no real reason to get excited, but the mood in the room was infectious. No one moved, no one spoke.

Each of the three boys stood still, hands at their sides, staring straight ahead. After a moment or two, the drummer sank into a crouch, both hands raised above his head. The bass player stuck his leg out to the side, holding the pose like some yogi, and the guy who John assumed would end up on piano leaned to the left, hand on his hip, right hand up in the air.

 _But is it art?_ John thought. He looked around the room. No one else seemed primed to make a joke of it, which was in itself amazing.

A murmur ran through the crowd. Someone moved to the stage from the back of the bar. John craned his neck to see, but all he caught was the top of a head, dark curls standing out in all directions.

The bloke leapt onto the stage, landing lightly on both feet. He stood straight, back turned to the audience, before he took up the guitar and looped the strap around his neck. He played a single chord on it, low and sonorous, then spun on the ball of his foot to face them.

He was absurd looking, really, all spindly limbs in tight blue jeans and a form-fitting black t-shirt. His face was not so much made up as decorated, hot pink lipstick and thick lines of bright pink blush across each of his high cheekbones, shimmery black eye shadow and so much eyeliner, his face and hair strewed with glitter. There was something feral and aggressive about it, like he dared anyone to ridicule him. It wasn't makeup, John decided: it was war paint.

The face underneath the paint was unreal in its proportions, eyes too high, the length from chin to forehead too long. It shouldn't have worked but it did, it all did. John couldn't tear his eyes away to look at the crowd, to see how they were handling it, but silence reigned and he guessed everyone was just as rapt as he was.

The bloke stepped to the microphone and spoke into it, his voice deep and rich, going straight into John's spinal cord and taking up residence there.

"We used to be the Sussex Vampires," he said. "Now we're the Dancing Men."

He strummed the guitar. Together the band dropped their poses, moved to their instruments, and started to play.

The music surprised John. It was more complex than anything he'd ever heard done in a bar, and a hell of a lot sexier. The lead's vocal range was enormous: he growled low tones and pitched his voice high as he sang a song that seemed to be about being teased at school and seeing through everyone. A little pretentious, but the lyrics weren't what kept John's attention.

It was the way he moved, seemed to playact everything, bowing his head reverently, then dropping to his knees and crawling across the stage while he gripped the microphone in his teeth. It was like watching a complete mental breakdown in progress, in some alternate world where having a mental breakdown turned you into a hot sex god. Whatever he was doing, the big ego was owning it. It was nothing short of incredible.

John had never opened himself up for anyone, never acted out like that, never mind letting it all loose in front of a crowd of strangers. As the fifth song of the set ended and the piano player picked out a slow, quiet tune, he found himself staring at the black table top in front of him as if it might tell him all the answers.

One of the queens tugged on his shirt sleeve and pulled him toward her. He leaned in.

"You all right honey?"

He forced a smile. "Sure, fine."

"First time seeing him play then?"

John nodded.

"You'll like this next bit," she said. "It's why we're all here."

Up on stage, the big ego was starting to croon. "I see you," he sang in a high, reedy voice.

John craned his neck to see what was happening. The singer was perched on the bar stool, microphone stand held out in front of himself like a weapon aimed at the crowd. He'd abandoned the guitar, which he'd already proven he was great at playing. The cords in his arms stood out. He was tall, skinny, but he looked strong. The way he held the microphone stand did things to John.

"I see you," the bloke sang again. He scanned the crowd, hand over his eyes to block out the spotlight.

"Do me!" a girl yelled.

John's mouth dropped open. He wondered if he should laugh, but no one else did. A couple of other people yelled "Here!" and "Me!"

God. Must be nice to have people literally screaming for it.

John's eyes shifted back to the improbable creature onstage, who was expanding his song ("All the things you are, all the things you've done"), still looking over the audience, eyes moving with a laser focus from one person to the next. Apparently he wasn't quite giving them what they wanted, not exactly, because more people were crying out now.

Finally he pointed at the table of young women who'd come in together. "You, I see you," he sang. The piano music changed, settling into a broken tune, something from a 1940s dance hall filtered through an acid trip. "You offered to go down, but he wouldn't come up to meet ya," he sang, pointing at a boy who sat next to one of the girls. "He went down the back alley with a creature feature."

"Yes!" the girl shouted. "I knew it!"

People around them broke into applause and laughter, and the boy got up, grabbed the feather boa-wearing boy beside him, and kissed him full on the lips.

"You're better off without him coz she likes you best," the singer carried on, pointing at another girl at the same table. "She watches and waits while you take off your dress."

The two girls looked at each other. There was real emotion on the face of the one John could see, the one who apparently had a crush on the first girl.

The crowd hooted and screamed and yelled for more.

What was this? Some kind of mentalism, some kind of storytelling? Now big ego was singing to a couple, maybe in their mid-thirties, sitting at a table near the front. "You've got a new job and a new pair of shoes," he sang. "But the box under your bed still hides something you can't lose." The woman grinned and nudged the man, who applauded.

What the hell was that all about? There was no explanation forthcoming, as the singer moved on to other people, other targets.

It had to be some kind of poetry thing, John mused, as the bloke sang about green ladders leaning up against window frames and something to do with monkey glands. One older man, maybe in his late forties or early fifties, stood up and left, tugging a younger woman behind him, shortly after that. The rest of the audience still seemed crazy for it, screaming and carrying on.

"I see you, all the things you are, all the things you do," the singer continued. He must have been going for at least ten minutes, and he showed no sign of letting up.

"The Hornbeam line didn't do you any good," he sang. "You've got metal in your shoulder and a taste for blood."

John froze, his focus locked on the singer now, who seemed to be staring directly at him.

"A head full of secrets, you've been drinking here since six; you're sad and mad and you miss your old tricks."

As he sang the last line, he ran his hand down his own rib cage, leaned back, head thrown back, skimmed the line of white skin where his t-shirt lifted away from his jeans, and caressed the front of his hip.

The queens shouted and clapped. The one who'd spoken to him earlier grinned up at him. He nodded at her, trying to get something like a smile on his face. He looked around the bar, wondering if anyone else noticed the singer was focused on him. A couple of people were smiling at him, applauding hard, like he'd accomplished something by being stripped down in front of them.

John blinked and the singer was prowling across the stage, humming and moving like a tiger as the band struck up behind him, drummer and bass joining the tinkling piano. The singer picked up his guitar and started to play.

John's first impulse was to leave, to hide himself away. At the same time, he was riveted in place. In any other context, that would have been a come-on, wouldn't it? It was all part of the show, no doubt. The music scene was all about sex these days, and probably always had been in one way or another. But he couldn't fight the feeling that the singer had looked at him, seen him, noticed him specifically, and in such an intimate way.

He shook his head. What had he sung, really? Head full of secrets, that could be about anyone. The drinking, that was all pretty obvious.The singer could have passed through the bar and seen him drinking all alone without John noticing, earlier. A fucking elephant could have passed through the bar without John noticing.

But the Hornbeam line: John’s assignment in Dhofar. There's no way he could have known about that. John's time with the army wasn't something he'd talked about to anyone, not really. Besides, he'd been invalided home three years ago. Ancient history. A few of his colleagues at Barts knew he'd been in the service, but no one knew about his shoulder, or the fact that he was still carrying shrapnel there, or the nerve damage that sometimes affected his fine motor dexterity. It was the reason he was training as a GP, not a surgeon, but he hadn't told anyone that.

Whatever the guy was doing, however he was doing it, it wasn't just a mentalist's trick. Any kind of magic act John had seen that involved guessing someone's age or house number or mother's maiden name always relied on a back-and-forth dialogue, a bunch of questions, wrong guesses, redirection.

The singer had done a cold reading of at least one of John's very specific personal details. John shivered, despite the heat of the bar. Big ego was incredible.

The way he'd touched himself. Jesus.

The song came to an end with a few strums on that black guitar and a final chord on the piano. The singer and the band stood at the front of the stage, bowing as the crowd screamed and cheered and clapped. John whistled and clapped as loudly as he could. Whatever he'd just witnessed, it certainly wasn't what he'd been expecting.

The band left the stage and the house lights came back on. They were mellow enough but John found himself blinking, his ears adjusting to the low murmur of the crowd as people stood, found their coats, and started heading for the door.

"That's going to be it, honey," the queen said to him.

"Oh?" John said. "Seems a bit short, doesn't it?" He checked his watch. It had been forty-five minutes since the band came on.

"He never does an encore after that last bit," she said. "Keeps people coming back for more. Did you like it?"

"It was good, yeah. A little—surprising." He smiled wryly.

The queen cocked her head at him. "No surprise to me," she said. "He has a taste for handsome men."

John blushed and looked at the floor, then back up at her. She squeezed his arm. "You have yourself a good night, sweetheart."

"You too."

The bar mostly emptied after that, but it wasn't last call yet. John ordered a lager and sipped it, watching the two girls the singer had picked out earlier play a slow game of billiards, smiling shyly, bumping into each other as they walked around the table.

_Well there's a happy ending._

His smile faltered as he thought about the A&E shift he had coming up at Barts tomorrow. He probably wouldn't be too hung over if he got some food into himself and drank some water before he went to bed, but he would need to leave soon if he wanted a decent amount of sleep.

He still lingered, completely unsure what he was doing. Hanging out, hoping that the singer would come out from the back? He studied the condensation on his glass, then watched the bartender move through the bar, wiping down tables and putting up chairs.

He had to leave soon, would be told to leave soon. He'd been at the bar for coming on six hours now. He was hungry, exhausted, and ridiculous.

The singer had been right about something else: he was sad and angry. He knew that.

Everything he'd accomplished, he'd had to do completely alone. That was okay. He'd learned early on it was easier not to count on other people. Still, no matter what he did, it seemed as though no one saw him for who he was, and he always ended up by himself.

He'd tried more than once to make a go of it with a woman, which was nice, usually, at least at first. He'd cared about them and they'd cared about him until it became clear he didn't have a lot to offer. Marriage never felt like a viable option; John was pretty sure he didn't believe in happily ever after.  In the end it was always the same conversation, with John struggling to answer the same questions about why he'd started something he couldn't finish.

Blokes were different.

They had to be, didn't they? Things had changed in the last few years, laws had changed, but it was still dangerous to be seen out in public with another man. You could still be arrested if you got caught with your hand down some bloke's pants, even if you'd done the sensible thing and gotten a hotel room.

John had never sought men out, not really, not for a relationship. He wasn't that bold, and he'd always been terrified of making a mistake. Ever since he was a lad, though, he'd paid attention to the signals other boys sent.

He'd always been receptive. 

He knew what to look for: a glance that lasted a bit too long, a word out of context. In those moments, it was everything, and John always felt at his most complete when he met those signals with his own. It was simple, beautiful and addictive. He'd never really felt at home anywhere, but with men he'd sometimes felt wanted, needed, which was almost as good. Better, sometimes.

Since he started training at Barts, though, he didn't dare go in for that kind of thing. When he was younger he'd narrowly avoided arrest on more than one occasion. Yeah, the law was more lenient now, but he was trying to make a life for himself, or at least a career, and he couldn't afford a scandal.

He thought about the singer again, that direct stare, his long-fingered hand sliding down into the lip of his trousers. It couldn't be a come on, even if it felt like one. It wasn't personal. He shouldn't be hanging out here like some groupie, hoping to get a piece of the entertainment. He was making a fool of himself.

He smiled into his glass as he finished draining it, laughing at himself, mostly.

The bartender was on the phone behind the bar. He kept talking as John approached.

"Yeah, totally switched on tonight, a complete animal. Yes, I called him off right after. I know we can't let him go on like that. Murder on the fans, yeah?" He glanced up at John, half a smile playing across his lips. "He took notice and it's possible but I have no idea who he is," he said. It sounded like gossip but the tone was wrong, too serious. 

The bartender nodded at John, still talking. "Yes he is," he said, examining his nails with their chipped red polish. John had the fleeting impression that the kid was talking about him. Man. He was further gone than he thought.

He left money on the bar, more than enough to cover his tab and a generous tip. If there'd been a cover charge for the band he'd never paid it, so he left a bit extra for that too.

The bartender called out to him: "Goodnight! See you again soon!" as John walked out the door.

Through the dusty window of the bar he could see the two girls standing by the billiard table, kissing each other, limbs tangled in a slow embrace. Sorrow welled up in his throat and he couldn't stand the idea of going home to his empty bedsit. It was the show. That singer. The whole damn evening. He was caught off guard and it threw him more than he wanted to admit.

Truth be told, it was a good thing, that music, being around those people, even seeing the singer, and feeling attraction. No harm done. At least he still had the capacity to be fascinated by someone. Him and everyone in that audience.

He would probably feel better if he took a walk. He could just wander, stretch his legs. His limp was back, a bit, not too bad, but sitting for long hours followed by standing through the show had stiffened him up.

He looped the block, not looking for the alley behind the bar, but finding it anyway. Halfway down, a rusted VW van sat parked by an open door. Maybe it was the band's. If their van was still there, maybe they were still around, maybe packing up their gear.

He didn't want to be a creep, but it couldn't hurt anything to see what was going on.

He chastised himself as he walked down the alley. He was acting like a besotted boy. He picked up the pace, hoping that if anyone saw him they would just assume he was taking a short cut.

As he approached the parked van, he heard voices through the open doorway. One of them was unmistakeably the singer's: deep and rich, musical even in speech.

"Yes he's definitely the one you want. You arrested him, I trust."

The other voice was male, with an Estuary accent made gravelly through overuse or maybe a lot of smoking. "I can't arrest someone because he left before your show was over. I need evidence. I need something for the search warrant."

John slowed his pace. What business could the singer have talking with a police officer? He shouldn't be in this alley, he realized. He'd put himself at risk just coming down here.

The singer sighed. "That's hardly my concern. Don't you usually just make reasons up?"

"No, I don't make reasons up. That would be illegal, yeah? Give me something."

"Okay. Interview the wife. Ask her about her dog's kennel arrangements."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. She suspects he's having an affair with the woman who runs it. She'll show you his travel schedule to try to get you to help her prove it. Get a copy of that and you'll see that his last trip out of town, for which he won't be able to produce receipts, coincides with the murder."

"Okay." The other man sounded relieved.

John felt as though he'd stumbled through the looking glass. In what world did the Met consult with musicians?

"Lestrade," the singer's voice called out. "Why don't you go out through the front. Get Davy to pour you a drink. My treat."

"What? Why?" The surprise was evident in the man's voice.

"No reason. We had a good night tonight. The band, I mean. And with the case ending, that's good news, isn't it?"

"Uh, yes?"

"Besides, you never know what kind of shady characters are out in that alley," the singer said, his voice lilting with good humour, or possibly mockery.

John's heart pounded in his chest. He should have known he couldn't sneak around back here, certainly not listen in on the conversation, without being noticed.

There was the sound of the door swinging open, and then swinging partway shut again, and a bar of yellow light that shone into John's eyes, and then receded, and footsteps moving toward him, on the other side of the van. The singer stepped into view, tilting his head as he walked toward John. His face was almost clean of makeup, the skin red, as if he'd scrubbed it. A trace of mascara and eyeliner still lingered under his eyes. In the corner of his mouth, a lipstick smear remained.

"Hello," the singer said, sharp eyes flicking to John's elbow, his feet, his face. "Don't worry, he's gone now. Never ones to turn down free booze, detective inspectors."

"Hello," John said, at a loss to say anything else.

The singer stood tall, his posture haughty as he chewed his lower lip and squinted. "Enjoy the show?"

John allowed a smile to cross his lips. He should probably get out of here. He'd made plans, promises to himself, about blokes, about not getting involved any more.

He didn't move. Nothing could make him leave now.

"I've never seen anything like it."  

The singer frowned. "But did you enjoy it?"

"Yes. I mean, it was amazing. Incredible. I can't think how it was done."

The singer pressed his lips together, then took a deep breath. "It's really just a fusion of psychedelic rock with a cabaret sensibility and some improvisation." His expression was deadpan as he waited for John's reaction.

The joke was so unexpected, John found himself laughing, really laughing, without meaning to. Whoever he was, whatever he was, the singer was intelligent as hell and terrifyingly hot and funny, too.

"What's your name?" John asked.

"Sherlock Holmes." He offered his hand.

Sherlock's fingers were long and thin, his hands soft looking, but there was steel in them. The press of his palm against John's was sure, steady, and electric. In the light that spilled from the half open door of the bar, Sherlock's hair sparkled with glitter. John wondered how hard it would be to arrange to shut that door, to leave them in the dark and quiet, alone together.

 _Sherlock Holmes_. The name hardly matched the image of the young rock god. Then again, the man himself hardly looked like the wild thing that had burned onstage just a short while before. He was plain, unadorned in his t-shirt and jeans, but so much more real.

John relaxed his grip, hoping that the singer would hang on, squeeze his hand, trace a finger along his wrist: anything to indicate that there was something between them, that John wasn't the only one feeling it.

Sherlock released his hand, took a step back, and looked down at the pavement.

John's breath caught in his throat as he choked out his own name. "John Watson."

Sherlock raised his head. "Yes. John Watson, released from active duty due to injuries sustained in Dhofar, 1971, probably, age...twenty seven?"

"Twenty-eight." John cleared his throat. "So you don't know everything, just most of it."

Sherlock shot him a critical look. "No need to rub it in." His gaze skimmed John's hand. "Doctor in training."

"That's right."

Sherlock continued to study John. What else did he see? Probably John's whole life story.

"How did you know about med school?"

Sherlock brought his right hand to his nose and sniffed it. "You've got residue from triclosan scrub under your nails. You've been in an operating theatre or other place requiring antiseptic protocols in the last 24 hours, but you didn't perform surgery yourself or there would be powder from gloves under your nails as well. So you were observing at a close range, likely part of your education, learning a new procedure."

John was certain his face was doing all kinds of things to betray his surprise. "Amazing."

"You think so?"

"I think you know it is."

Silence stretched out between them. A distant car horn echoed through the streets.

It wasn't the right moment. John knew that, although he couldn't have said why. It felt right to him, to be standing here. Just being near Sherlock was enough to make his breath catch. He would jump at any chance to touch him, to press their bodies together, in the alley, in the warm night.

Nothing was going to happen. The signals weren't there, for whatever reason. Maybe that was okay. This wasn't one of those sweet, dark exchanges that happened and then disappeared forever when the taste of bitter salt faded from John's tongue. Maybe there would be another time.

"I should let you go," Sherlock said. "Things to do. "

John licked his lips and summoned the most charming smile he could. "Guitars to tune? Criminals to catch?"

Sherlock's smile was rueful. "Precisely."

There were layers of mystery to Sherlock Holmes. John was caught, utterly stuck, in the thin space between wanting to unravel them all, and hoping they would remain in place, kept safe for some future moment when they might talk again. "All right."

He forced himself to turn and walk down the alley. He expected disappointment but he didn't feel it. His whole body thrummed with the strangeness of this encounter, this whole night.

Sherlock called out after him, his voice resonating down the alley. "We play here twice a week, Friday and Saturday. We're the main event," he said, dropping his voice half an octave.

Something twisted in John's belly, and considerably lower. He didn't turn back, but he grinned as he headed for home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song at the head of this chapter is "Lady Stardust." It's one of my favourites (okay, I have a lot of favourites) but I especially burn for [this raw and gorgeous demo version](https://youtu.be/tfjj5WmgTNE?list=RDtfjj5WmgTNE), and it's what I had in mind as I wrote this chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

 

* * *

 

**Not Quite Doubting**

 

 _When you rock and roll with me_  
_No one else I'd rather be_  
_Nobody down here can do it for me_  
_I'm in tears again_  
_When you rock and roll with me_

 

 

John stood in the tiny, white-tiled break room at Barts, waiting for the kettle to boil. He was only halfway through his Saturday A&E shift, his last one before he moved on to his new assignment in orthopaedics.

He was already feeling it.

It started at seven a.m. with a case of appendicitis, and carried on through every variety of personal injury. He'd sutured wounds and wrapped ankles and wrists and distributed painkillers. He'd sent a woman in labour on to obstetrics and pronounced one man DOA. That last one was a bit strange: no next of kin, and a history of hospital visits for respiratory issues. The man's skin had been bright pink. No ligature marks. Carbon monoxide poisoning? A suicide, perhaps. Information gathered at the scene hadn't been passed on because one of the paramedics had thrown his back out, and the other had gone off to help him.

John had sent the body on to the coroner. 

Out in the hallway, outside the break room, someone shouted a name he didn't recognize. An intern ran past the doorway with a clipboard clutched to his chest. If they needed John, they knew where to find him, but he was happy to take a breather. His left hand cramped, balling into a painful fist. He shook it out and tried to stretch his fingers while he allowed his mind to drift.

A feeling like a slowly building itch had taken up residence under the surface of his skin. A scab wanted picking, but it was nothing he could touch or reach.

The singer's name was Sherlock Holmes, and he could read John like a book.

He sighed, closing his eyes against the memory of Sherlock's firm, smooth hand in his. His eyes like cold fire, his voice like warm honey.

John was so lost in thought he didn't realize someone else had come into the break room. The first he knew of it, that someone nudged him aside, trying to get to the row of mugs on the counter in front of him.

"Sorry," he said, stepping back for the shyly smiling woman in the lab coat.

"That's okay." Her voice was small as she studied the mug in her hands.

He passed her the box of tea and watched the steam rise from the kettle.

Sherlock's muscular body had writhed as he crawled across the stage on hands and knees, and a drop of sweat had fallen from his chin.

_You miss your old tricks._

"Late night last night?" the woman asked.

A bad sleep. He'd woken several times in his solitary bed, his mind busy with Sherlock Holmes. "A bit. Why do you ask?"

"You look like you wish you were still there, wherever it was. And there's a bit of glitter on your cheek."

"Oh. Oh God." John rubbed his face. A fine sheen of gold decorated his fingertips. He remembered one patient, a burly man in his late sixties, staring at him with disgust as John taped his broken toe. "That explains a lot."

"Here," the woman said, taking a paper napkin from the dispenser on the counter, and wetting it in the sink.

He tried to take it from her.

"No, let me help," she said. "It'll go faster."

He let her scrub his cheek. "This is embarrassing." 

She pursed her lips, suppressing a smile. She was adorable, in a quiet sort of way, dimpled and brunette.

"There." She showed him the napkin dusted with glitter. "Look up at the light and turn your head? I want to make sure it's all gone."

He did, feeling ridiculous. He had showered this morning, but rushed through shaving, not looking too closely at himself in the mirror. Everything he'd touched last night had been slathered with glitter. Everyone.

"Okay, that's good." The woman turned to throw away the napkin.

John filled both their mugs with hot water. "Sit?" he said.

She blinked uncertainly. "Okay."

They crammed themselves in around the tiny table, sorted out milk and sugar. By the time John had gulped down half his tea, he'd begun to feel a bit less ashamed, but no less restless.

"I'm Molly Hooper."

"John. John Watson. I'm sorry, are you an intern? I don't think I've seen you around."

"No. I'm in the path labs. Post-mortems, mostly."

"Oh. Do you like it? Post-mortems?"

She smiled down at her mug. "It's interesting. So much happens to people, in so many different ways. Sometimes you can guess just by looking at them, but sometimes you have to go very deeply, right into their tissues, before you can figure it out."

She glanced at him, good humour written all over her face.

He found himself nodding—and wincing. It was ludicrous, trying to have a serious get to know you chat when she'd just been cleaning up his face like she was his mum. She giggled softly and bit her lip.

"Sorry," she said.

"It's fine."

Maybe it _was_ fine. Maybe it was all fine. He couldn't stop thinking about Sherlock. His skin was coming off; he was ready to split in two. But it had to be fine. It was all a joke, wasn't it? Last night was a memory, an anecdote. He could let it be a good one. Yes, that was the best he could do. He could let it be amusing.

It wasn't, he assured himself, as he leaned back in his chair, and allowed himself to fall into the memory of the night before, that he wished he could talk to someone about Sherlock Holmes. No, not that. 

"I was at this bar last night. This really strange bar. And there was this show, with a lot of glitter. Everyone was wearing it. I wasn't. I mean, I wasn't when I went in, but I guess I picked it up." God, he didn't have any idea where to start.

She sat up. "Was there a band? With a sort of song where the lead singer tells people things? About themselves."

A thin line of panic ran through him. He had said too much. "Yeah."

She nodded. "That's Sherlock's show. It's different, isn't it?"

He studied her more closely. She was a little thing, hair worn in a ponytail swept to the side. Nothing to suggest a connection to the man he'd met last night, unless she was hiding some kind of amazing outfit under that lab coat. "You know him?"

"He comes in sometimes, to the mortuary."

John spun through the possible reasons a bloke from a rock band would be spending time in a hospital mortuary. Did it have something to do with his connection to the Met?

Or was this woman Sherlock's girlfriend? He wouldn't have guessed Sherlock would be into girls, but, given some of the things he sang about, he did have a morbid streak a mile wide. A girlfriend with regular access to corpses might hold a certain interest. Or maybe he was more into the corpses themselves. There was something he sang about, something about a severed ear in a cardboard box. John wished he could remember it clearly. 

"I probably shouldn't have told you that," Molly added in a whisper. "No one's supposed to know. He comes in at night, mostly."

"Oh." John's heart sank. He held up his hands. "You don't have to explain. It sounds private."

"No! It's not—I mean, my supervisors wouldn't appreciate it but it's not like. You know. He's not. He's doing research."

Some deep internal mechanism recalibrated. Molly wasn't Sherlock's girlfriend. He came to the hospital sometimes. That man, that liquid mercury in human form, couldn't possibly walk these halls. But there it was. A smile played across John's lips as he imagined running into Sherlock, saying hello. "Research? What do you mean, research?"

"All kinds. He's really good with chemistry and cell biology. He's most interested in unusual deaths. Poison, asphyxiation, stabbings, any kind of murder. And he does his own experiments with—" she dropped her voice— "with some of the bodies."

"Wow." It was a bit much to take in. It sounded illegal. John loved it. "When does he have time?"

"I don't think he sleeps much."

"This is for some kind of job?"

She tilted her head and studied him before she answered, biting her lower lip and squinting just a little. "You should ask him about it. You know, sometime."

John looked down at the table top. White sugar granules scattered the surface. He could feel her eyes on him. What did she see? What did she know?

"I will," he said, nodding, eyes locked on the rim of his mug. He definitely would. "If I get the chance of it."

***

It was two p.m. when Molly found him in one of the exam rooms. John had just finished up with a little girl who'd stepped on broken glass.

"Hello again," she said.

"Oh, hi." He nodded at her over the form he was filling out. His handwriting was terrible to the point of cliché, but a registrar was using the single available typewriter on the floor, and in any case he was bad at typing too, hunting and pecking with two fingers. He always took an age with forms.

"I just spoke to Sherlock," she said.

"Yeah?" John wouldn't even fuss with himself over the eagerness in his voice. He was eager. He positively brimmed with hope.

"I was just wondering, are you going to the bar tonight? I'm taking some results over to him, to show him after he plays. We sometimes talk a bit, and hang out a little. I mean, he'll probably have some follow-up questions. Tests he'll want me to run. If you want, you could come."

"I don't want to impose. It's a nice offer, but it sounds like you'll be busy."

He wanted everything. The moon and stars. Some excuse to throw all his careful plans away and move in a totally unexpected direction. He couldn't stand it if he was just a hanger-on, though. 

When Molly smiled, her dimples deepened. "No imposition. I mentioned that I met you and he told me to make sure you're there."

"He did?"

"He did. It seems that senior house officers are very much required tonight."

Sherlock Holmes remembered him. Sherlock Holmes asked him to come back.

"All right." He was beaming. He couldn't help it. "I'll see you there."

***

John flew through his last few patients, all the while thinking about the evening ahead. As soon as he was done, he rushed home. He made a perfunctory dinner, soft boiled eggs and toast, followed with an apple and a couple of mugs of tea. Going to a bar on an empty stomach two nights in a row: not the brightest idea. He wanted to be bright.    

He fussed over what to wear, laying every decent piece of clothing he owned out on his bed. Unable to pick something, he retreated to the loo, where he lathered his face with shaving foam and filled the sink with hot water.

He was more excited about tonight than he'd been about anything in a long time.

To be brutally accurate about it, he was more excited about Sherlock Holmes than he'd been about anyone in a long time. He combed his pale hair and adjusted the collar of the shirt he finally settled on. He'd already brushed his teeth twice but he rinsed with mouthwash again, and checked his neck for shaving foam.

It was 9:30 pm. Last night the show had started around 10:30 or 11, probably. If he left soon, he would be there in time to get a seat and maybe chat with Molly a bit. She seemed nice.

He couldn't stop himself from going over everything she'd said again. She knew Sherlock. Sherlock frequented the mortuary. Sherlock had gone out of his way to invite John to the show.

He paced the length of his apartment. He was definitely getting ahead of himself. He wasn't thinking about any of the practical considerations. It was just such a relief to feel something positive for once. 

Sherlock Holmes might turn out to be nothing like he thought. He might well disappear in a burst of glitter at midnight. Whatever happened, John was determined to enjoy himself, enjoy this.

The bar was already crowded when he arrived, people milling around, looking for seats, leaning across tables to yell at each other, ordering drinks. He skipped the bar and looked for Molly. She seemed like the last sort of person who would fit in here, but then again, that described him as well.

He finally saw her sitting at a table right in front of the stage, with three boys dressed all in white suits—trousers, dress shirts, jackets, ties. It was only when he approached that he realized they were the band. She smiled up at him while she listened to one of them talk earnestly about how he'd like to get a better piano in for their shows.

She wore a red dress with thin shoulder straps. She'd done her hair up in curls. She looked like a starlet from a 1950s movie, quite different from the serious looking lab assistant he'd met earlier.

"Mick, if you're done talking, we've got to start in five," one of the other boys said.

"Oh, right."

The boys nodded at John. One of them clapped him on the shoulder as he walked past.

"You look nice," John told Molly as he sat down.

"You too. Less glittery than earlier, but that will probably change."

Her cheek sparkled with red dust as she turned to look at the stage, and gold glitter had somehow got all over the table, something he noticed only after he rested his elbows in it. He really should just be done with it and roll in the stuff if he planned to spend time here. 

The piano player—Mick—moved onto the stage. He removed his jacket, hung it over a coat rack beside the piano, unbuttoned his sleeves, and rolled them up. As the lights went down, all talk diminished into silence. A bank of fat pillar candles glowed on top of the piano. Mick sat, stretched his fingers, and began to play.

The tune built slowly, single notes developing into something that might have been jangled out at a saloon on the American frontier. The other two band members came on, serious as they took their places.

Finally, Sherlock stepped onto the stage. He looked down at the floor, hands clasped behind his back. He wore black trousers and a black waistcoat over a white shirt, no tie, and none of the bravado of the night before. The shirt's top buttons were undone, revealing collarbone. The waistcoat skimmed his torso. He wore no makeup, his face pale under his mass of dark curls.

Sherlock picked his guitar up from the bar stool and pulled the strap over his head. He leaned into the microphone, and his eyes met John's.

John was a wire, pulled tight, held suspended in this moment, the weight of Sherlock's gaze as steady as a touch.

"You think you know, but you don't know me," Sherlock sang in a low, guttural growl. On the last two syllables he played an ear-piercing note on the guitar, and the bass and drums joined him. The song turned into something like a ballad, slow and mournful.

"He came back again to the scene of his own crime. Chasing time and again the same battle, same line. I said 'Hey man, it's not me you want this time.' He ran his hands down my chest and said it should be fine."

Sherlock poured himself into the microphone like it was a lover's mouth, his eyes hooded, voice dropped into its lower registers, dripping with honey or maybe venom.

"I said you think you know, but you don't know me."

As the song reached its bridge, Sherlock lifted the guitar strap over his head. He placed the guitar back on the bar stool and dragged the microphone stand with him as he moved to the back of the stage. Mick took over on piano, playing a long and complicated solo that John hardly heard because he was too busy looking at the clean lines of Sherlock's body as he stood, head down, swaying to the music.

As Mick's solo reached its peak, Sherlock ran to the front of the stage and fell to his knees, sliding into place right in front of John.

"You want me on the floor, in the back of the bar. Take me apart and it's another holy war. I see everything my mind implodes and you don't mind, but I'm not easy I am hard so goddamned hard so fucking hard." He collapsed forward as Mick's piano took over again, banging out the climax of the song. People in the audience screamed and clapped.

Jesus Christ. John panted, utterly helpless to do anything but stare as he watched Sherlock heave, his sweat-dampened curls glistening in the low spotlight. 

The piano came to a halt and Sherlock looked up at John, blinking the sweat from his eyes, face set in defiance. A dare. It was a dare.

John couldn't applaud when the rest of the audience started. He managed to blink as Sherlock turned away, his eyes watching John as long as they could, until he bent over the piano and said something to Mick.

The rest of the set included at least one song from the night before. Sherlock focused on his guitar, singing sweetly rather than howling and crawling across the stage, but it was just as brilliant. There was something about the way Sherlock teased notes from the back of his throat that had John's entire body humming. Something very tender built in him, note by note. _Maybe_ , his blood sang: _maybe_.

The last song started. The tune was the same as the night before but the pace was off, too rapid. Sherlock stared out at the audience. John wondered if Sherlock would read him again. He hoped he would at least look at him with that ability of his. He must see. He must know.

Sherlock called out infidelities, reminded someone to pay their taxes, someone else to phone home, and told three boys toward the back of the room that they were moments away from getting a parking ticket. There was none of the romance of the night before, none of the sly humour. If anything, it was abrasive. Some of the audience laughed a little, but by the time the song finished, John was left wondering what it was all about.

Molly slipped away from the table as the house lights went up. She returned moments later and put a pint of beer down in front of him, and sipped at her own.

"Oh, thanks," he said. "What do I—"

She shook her head. "Band's tab." She pulled a file folder out from under her arm, and placed it on the table. "It's all right. He wouldn't let you pay anyway."

She shuffled through the folders. He watched people file out of the bar. Someone shut down the stage lights. The bartender began wiping down tables.

Sherlock came out from the back of the bar, pulled out the chair beside John, and sat.

He wore the same trousers and shirt, sleeves rolled up now, waistcoat unbuttoned. He had a towel draped around his neck. He smelled like soap and fresh sweat. He was beautiful. Perfect.

At first John thought there was little resemblance between the bloke he'd met in the alley the night before and the man who sat beside him, but under the constraints of nice clothes and tamer curls, Sherlock looked the same: unknowable, a mystery wearing yet another mask.

Sherlock looked at Molly, head cocked to the side. "What did you think of the show?"

She kept her eyes on the papers in front of her. "Good. It was good."

"But?" He seemed poised to receive criticism, his expression open, but also a little wounded.

"A bit much at the end there," she said, her voice small. "Maybe time for a tune-up?"

He rolled his eyes, sighed audibly, and leaned back in his chair. "They never seem to want to leave when I want them to. Sometimes there are just other things to do."

That was the moment he chose to turn his gaze on John. John's insides transformed to pure liquid heat.

Sherlock took a sharp breath as he took a file from the stack in the middle of the table. "I see you succeeded in fulfilling all my requests, Molly."

Her smile grew a little brighter as she handed over a few photographs.

"It's good to see you again, John," Sherlock said, studying what proved to be pictures of a waterlogged corpse.

"Yeah, well. Thank you," John said. "I didn't want to intrude, but Molly said—"

"Whatever she said was correct," Sherlock said, speaking over him. "An ex-military doctor in training may be just what we need right now."

John cleared his throat. The conversation was going in all kinds of directions he hadn't anticipated. "How's that?"

Sherlock placed a series of photos in front of John. The first was the waterlogged corpse—female, maybe in her thirties. The second, a scattered collection of severed limbs and fragments of body parts, strewn across an utterly destroyed and burned room. The third, a sitting room containing three people, an apparently normal scene, except that each of them were long dead, and showing signs of decay. Their clothes were torn and dirty, their skin shrunken against their hands and faces.

"Tell me. Do you see anything connecting these three crime scenes?"

John looked at him. "I'm sorry. What is this for?"

"For science, John. For the thrill of knowing you've taken something apparently unsolvable and understood it."

"Is this what you do? What about the music?"

"This is what I do. The music is a necessary outlet."

Sherlock wasn't a man, John decided, but a human tornado, a force to be reckoned with, and much, much more interesting than John could have hoped. Whatever the game, he wanted to play.

He pointed to the first photo. "Drowning?"

"Poisoning," Molly said. "Cationic detergent, a moderate amount regularly put in her bath."

John studied the image. "Fabric softener?"

"Fabric softener," Sherlock said. "Almost impossible to detect. She appeared to have drowned. She was a great bather, apparently, and so met an appropriate end. But the cause of death wasn't drowning. Convulsion. There was kidney damage. Miss Hooper was the one to suggest it. The Met was at a loss, as usual."

"Okay," John said. "Murder, then."

"No."

"No?"

"She lived alone. Totally isolated, according to the neighbours. Practically a shut-in."

"God. You're thinking suicide?"

"By small increments."

The bright pink corpse from earlier today surfaced in John's mind. He wished he didn't understand why someone would take his or her own life. He did, unfortunately. Still, a grand, final gesture made a kind of sense. Doing it a bit at a time, deliberately, seemed like a total nightmare.

He looked at the next picture. "And a bomb?"

"Yes, obviously. Homemade. Effective, as you see. No use in partially blowing yourself up. Uncomfortable."

The corpses in the third photo appeared posed, lounging on armchairs and the sofa in the tidy sitting room. "A mass murder?"

"Serial killings, technically, or serial suicides. Inconclusive." He pointed at each body in turn. "One, two, three, according to their state of decay. Number three almost certainly killed himself." He pointed at the corpses in turn again. "Stabbing, shooting, poison. They died a month apart from each other, approximately. Discovered two days ago. Neighbours will always notice the smell."

"Right." John studied the three photos. "What makes you think there's any connection at all?"

Sherlock spread his hands as if he expected to feel the answers coming in through his palms.

"These six people—well, four people and assorted body parts, six-ish—have no immediate or recent connection, but if you go back far enough in time, their lives intersect. Take the three posed corpses. Each went to the same school in London when they were eight and nine years old. Then the bomb victims, the two we've identified, anyway—they're a little older than the others. They both moved to London from Rye when they were twelve, as did our bath enthusiast. We're looking for some situation or person in their past, perhaps someone they knew when they were very young."

The three members of Sherlock's band came out from behind the bar, accompanied by two women.

"Sherlock, put all that away," Mick called out.

Across the table, Molly started to tidy up the papers, tucking them back into folders. "Anything more you want done with the three?" she said. "I've been holding the bodies since earlier today."

"Yes. Check for any signs of post-polio syndrome."

"It's impossible to confirm. The decomposition—"

"I know. But do try."

The band broke out in loud laughter over in the corner by the billiard table, where they flipped through the menu of an aging jukebox. Sherlock stared at them, the corner of his mouth pressing into a smile. "Rude," he murmured.

The band and their girlfriends wandered back to the bar and arranged shot glasses across the top of it. John's beer glass sat empty on the table. He wouldn't say no to a shot about now.

Sherlock leaned over to say something to Molly. John thought he caught the words, "Look, he's here."

A man in a rumpled trench coat stood in the bar's entrance. "Oh," Molly said. "I've got to—I need to go check my makeup. Tell him...something." She grabbed her purse and rushed off.

John watched as rumpled trench coat took a shot from one of the girls, drank it down, took two more, and walked with them in hand over to the table. "Hello," he said. He smiled at John.

"She'll be back soon," Sherlock told rumpled trench coat as he opened a file folder and skimmed through a pathology report.

John waited for an introduction, but none came.

The twee bartender poked his head out from the doorway leading to the back of the bar. "Sherlock, telephone for you," he said.

A cloud passed over Sherlock's face. "Honestly, Davy, now?"

"Telephone," the bartender said, insistent. "The mayor wants to talk to you, Sherlock."

Sherlock rose wordlessly and walked to the back of the bar.

"I'm Greg," rumpled trench coat said, handing John one of the glasses.

John took it, gladly. "Thanks. John." He downed the drink—whiskey of some sort—and held out his hand to shake Greg's. He looked toward the back of the bar. He could see Sherlock, not on the phone at all but talking with Davy, his head bowed, nodding as Davy spoke to him.

"He'll be back soon too," Greg said. "Rude bastard sometimes, but don't worry yourself."

"Mayor?" John asked.

Greg shrugged. "Probably some musician."

The jukebox started to play a song that opened with acoustic guitar and harmonica. John knew it; it was a year or two old. The singer was Canadian. It was a bit folksy for John's taste but the lyrics were nice. John was about to ask Greg how long he'd known Sherlock when the man himself emerged from the back of the bar. He moved slowly, languidly, eyes on John as he reached the table.

"John. Dance?"

John looked around the bar. No one else seemed inclined to dance. "This song is slow," he said.

"Yes." Sherlock reached for his hand, took it, tugged on it. "Dance with me."

John stood. He glanced at Greg, who raised his glass. Whoever he was, John supposed he couldn't be too judgmental, if he knew Sherlock.

"Do you lead?" Sherlock asked, watching John's face as if trying to memorize every crease, every old acne scar. John blinked up at him. Sherlock wasn't as tall as he seemed onstage; still, taller than John, by about half a head. John's hand was completely enclosed in Sherlock's. Warm. His breath caught in his throat.

Through the jukebox speakers, the singer's high, reedy voice sang about looking for a heart of gold.

"I can lead," John said.

"Good." Sherlock placed his hand on John's shoulder, and held up his right hand for John to hold.

As John put his hand on Sherlock's waist, Sherlock touched the back of John's neck, pulling himself closer. Their chests and bellies pressed together. John swallowed down a host of tender feelings.

"You should hold my waist more firmly," Sherlock said, watching John's face. "Closed position."

"Okay," John said. He had no idea what this beautiful bloke was talking about, but the music was good and he wanted to move with him, and his hand on John's neck was too warm and too cold all at once.

John was a good dancer. Not an amazing one, but he'd learned from one of the men in his barracks, who'd taught him that it wasn't all about placing your feet correctly or learning a set pattern. It was about making your partner feel like she—the bloke had never said 'he,' despite what happened between them after—was in good hands.

John believed he had good hands.

Sherlock didn't take his eyes off John as John moved them across the floor. John held his gaze as long as he could, breaking it when he felt like it was too much or when he forgot to breathe.

 _Yes, this_ , he thought. This fire in his gut and heart, this need, this tentative anticipation. This was what he wanted. Even if there was risk.

Over Sherlock's shoulder, John saw that Molly had returned to the table. She sat next to Greg, talking to him, their heads close together as they looked through some of the files. She laughed at something he said, and her eyes sparkled at him.

John sighed. His belly pressed into Sherlock's. It felt right to him, by some miracle. He looked into Sherlock's face. Those eyes—those pale, sure eyes—were still on him.

"Thank you for letting me stay tonight," he managed. "I never would have guessed there was so much going on here."

"I thought you might find it amusing," Sherlock said. "We don't get a lot of ex-army doctors in here. Lestrade will certainly appreciate having a medical man on the case." He tossed his head in Greg and Molly's direction.

John's entire body stiffened with alarm. "Lestrade?" He looked at the man sitting at the table. Lestrade was the name of the detective inspector who was in the bar after the show last night, who'd almost caught John hanging about.

Currently Lestrade was smiling at Molly, reaching his hand out to brush her wrist, toying with the bracelet she wore. John hissed, lost track of the dance, and found that he was gripping Sherlock's hand more tightly than he meant to. "Is that—is he from the alley last night? Sherlock, is that the police?"

"Yes."

"What are we doing, then? I mean, we're not doing anything wrong, but men have been arrested for less."

He tried to pull away, to release Sherlock, but Sherlock gripped his shoulder and held his hand tight.

"John. Do you really think he's in an arresting mood right now?"

John relaxed enough to keep dancing. Lestrade did look like he had other things on his mind.

"Why is he here?" John asked.

"Molly. He's recently divorced. Unhappily married for years, and now he's free. And he's looking for help with that case. Well, it's not officially a case. Just a sort of theory he's cooked up. He can't prove anything. That's where we come in."

"You and Molly."

A smile moved across Sherlock's lips. "I was thinking more you and me, if it sounds like something you'd be interested in."

The song was reaching its end. John moved through it, pulling Sherlock to him a little more tightly. The last notes faded and the jukebox lapsed into silence.

John loosened his hold on Sherlock's waist, the satin of the waistcoat sliding beneath his fingers, the taut lines of Sherlock's lower back under his hand.

"Okay." He didn't know what he was agreeing to. He didn't know anything, except that Sherlock was asking something of him, which would mean spending more time together. It was all he needed to know.

Sherlock's hand moved to John's temple, his thumb rubbing John's hairline. He leaned in and pressed his lips to John's cheek. His breath was warm against John's ear. John sighed, his breath rough, his blood on fire.

Sherlock took John's hand and led him toward the billiard tables, where a pair of sectional sofas were pushed together to form an _L_. Sherlock sat down in the corner.

John sat beside him. His heart was full and his mind was gone and he wanted. He just wanted.

Sherlock turned toward him, his knee pressing into John's thigh. He propped his elbow on the back of the sofa, head resting on his hand as he watched John.

John cleared his throat. "So you solve crimes."

"Yes."

"And you want me to help."

Sherlock's voice was pitched low. "Yes."

"And we just danced."

"We did."

John turned to face him. The dance was beautiful. The whole evening was beautiful. He wondered if Sherlock would move closer, if he would reach out a hand, touch his face again.

Surely he would. Sherlock burned so brightly, as if no one had ever told him he couldn't do the things he did. John sat with it all, with the rough tangle of his emotions and raw physical need, and waited until he didn't know what he was waiting for any more.

He allowed his eyes to fall on Sherlock's hand, inches from his. He wanted to touch that white wrist, brush his fingers across the back of that hand, tangle their fingers together. He wanted to push his fingers into the dark curls of Sherlock's hair, touch his jaw line, kiss. He was aware of his pulse where Sherlock's knee pushed into his leg, aware of that point of contact, aware of all the points of contact that could happen.

"That song you sang. The first song," he said. His kept his voice gentle. His eyes lingered on Sherlock's mouth, his pillow lips.

"Yes?"

"Who was that about?"

"An old friend. Someone I knew when I was younger."

John risked a glance at Sherlock's eyes. "Friend?"

"Well, nemesis. But what's the difference, really?"

"Polar opposition?" John said. "At least, that's what most people think."

Sherlock looked deeply into John's eyes. "Perhaps."

Yells and hoots came from across the bar, and the band was coming over to them, carrying bottles and glasses and what appeared to be an enormous bong. John looked over to see Lestrade holding Molly's hand, drawing her up from her place at the table, and coming over too.

Well. It was an after party. Maybe for the best that there wasn't time to take things further. If Sherlock did kiss him, John wouldn't want to stop until much, much later. Until never. He shifted away from Sherlock a little, shame and need washing through him in hot bursts.

It was stupid, really, trying to pretend that they hadn't just been dancing moments before, or that he didn't wish he was snogging Sherlock right now, but he couldn't help it. He'd been teased for the closeness of his boyhood friendships, for wanting to hold hands with his friends when he was little. And later, teased like all boys are, for being a faggot, a poof, a wee nancy boy, no matter how tough he was, no matter how much of his behaviour he altered, no matter how much he hid.

It was a reflex, this creation of distance.

Much to his relief, Sherlock sank down on the sofa a little lower, pressed the whole length of his shin into John's thigh, and slid his elbow down so it touched John's shoulder. The whole languid gesture seemed to say "mine."

John knew he needed to relax. He accepted an offer of whiskey from Mick, which came, thank God, in a giant tumbler. The band introduced themselves: the drummer's name was Rich and the bass player was called Froggie.

When the bong came his way, John took a hit off it, but only after Lestrade took two.

"I know what you're thinking," Lestrade said to him, leaning across Molly to take the bong again. "What's a bloke like me doing in a place like this? We're not all bad sorts, you know. Some of us do have fun from time to time."

Molly giggled as she sipped her drink. "He means it's okay," she told John. "You don't have to worry."

"I can't exactly arrest you all, can I?" Greg pointed in Sherlock's direction. "I need _him_ too much. He'd be pissed at me if I started locking up his friends. Besides, no harm, all this. The things he's looked into, this case he's working, well. I thought I'd seen it all, but some of what he's shown me scared the shit out of me. Gives you perspective. Focus on real crime, I say."

John blinked. The booze and pot had melted him into the sofa, and into Sherlock, who'd started running his fingers through John's hair. He wanted to ask about the case, but he was half gone, and the concerns he had about making out with Sherlock in front of all these people (real, serious concerns, he was sure of it) were fading with each stroke of those fingers.

"Oh, Sherlock," Froggie said, "I almost forgot. Davy says to tell you the mayor called it off."

Sherlock blinked and sat up in the corner of the couch. He looked at John, his brow furrowed, as if he were just waking up. He pulled his legs in under him, pulled his hands away, and coiled into a ball. "I'm sorry, what?" His voice was sharp, stroppy.

Froggie laughed. "You all there, mate?" He grinned at John. "He's always like that, going off into his own little world."

Sherlock looked at John like he was a stranger, as if they hadn't just been on the edge of something. Froggie and Rich passed the bong back and forth, Mick asked Greg a question about a bar down the street getting raided, someone cracked a joke, and the conversation rallied around them.

Sherlock still sat apart from John, his limbs pulled in, his body stiff.

John leaned in. "Are you okay?"

Sherlock frowned, his gaze running down to John's mouth. Something unnameable passed across his face. "Why wouldn't I be okay?" There was more in the question than John could fathom.

Maybe John had missed something, had somehow given offense. He wanted to reach out to Sherlock, pull him in, and promise things he had no right to promise, but the moment had passed. There was space between them. It felt necessary, somehow, although John wished it wasn't. He wished he understood.

"The mayor? Who knows who that is? He knows everyone," Froggie was telling Mick. "Sherlock, tell them who might come play with us. Tell them. It's going to blow their minds."

Sherlock shrugged. "I can't think who you're talking about." He glanced back at John, a trace of sadness in his eyes.

"Shut up," Rich said. "It's gonna be some mouldy jazz has-been like last time."

"Denis Rose is not mouldy," Sherlock said.

Rich looked at John, pleading. "It was a disaster. Can you picture us jamming with some old trumpet player?"

"One of our best shows," Sherlock countered.

"The worst."

"All right all right all right," Froggie said. "Just picture this. A certain popular glam god, recently very big with the public? Affecting a kind of spaceman persona? Playing here, with us?"

"No way," Mick said. "No way. Really?"

"Tell them," Froggie said to Sherlock.

Sherlock smirked. "We're talking about it."

"See?" Froggie said. "See? I told you man. He knows everybody."

"Really?" John said. "No." Even John had heard the Ziggy Stardust record.

Sherlock shrugged. "I helped his wife with a murder charge."

"And you're talking about jamming. With him," Froggie said. "With us."

"Yes," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes. "Do you know, you're all just clamouring for coitus with the rich and famous?"

"We're starfuckers, you mean," Mick said. He raised his hand. "Guilty as charged."

Rich shook his head. "With your contacts in the biz, mate, you could be famous. We could all be famous."

"Not this again," Froggie said. "It's got to be organic. If it's not, it won't fly."

"You are seriously underestimating the value of a good contact," Rich protested.

"You both need to find your chill," Mick said.

"You're too chill," Rich said.

"Medium chill," Mick replied.

This comment sparked a debate about the precise requirements to achieve medium chill, that devolved into loud laughter and more drinking. Soon John lost track of what was being said and who was saying it.

Sherlock maintained his distance. It was all right, John supposed, as he fought back disappointment. There were too many others here, too much going on, and Sherlock had seemed surprised at himself, or maybe John.

Despite his confusion, the company was fine, and the night was one of those that seemed to go on forever. John lost track of time until he looked at one of the windows and saw that it was growing light out. Somebody said something about breakfast, and Mick and Rich wandered off toward the back of the bar, their hands in each others' pockets. The band girlfriends had climbed into an old armchair a couple of hours before and fallen fast asleep.

John realized he was completely done in. He suppressed a yawn. "I think I've got to go home," he whispered to Sherlock.

"Dull," Sherlock said, then blinked at him. "Oh. You're tired."

"Sadly," John said. "If I don't get home soon, I might find myself napping in a gutter on my way."

Sherlock stood, stretched, and walked toward the door, his shirt rumpled and pulling out of the back of his trousers. He was a tousled god, newly arisen from the forest floor.

Christ, John really did need sleep, before he started spouting poetry aloud.

He said goodnight to Molly and Greg as he followed Sherlock. Outside, they blinked into the early morning light. John couldn't bear leaving without trying to say something, to let Sherlock know that he didn't want this to be a final goodbye.

"Will you call me?"

Sherlock's brow furrowed.

"You know, if you need me for the case."

"Okay." Sherlock's skin was pale and luminous, his eyes translucent.

John longed, again, to take Sherlock's hand, rub his thumb over his wrist. God, he wanted to kiss him, here in the street, just to stake some kind of claim, to let him know he liked him, he wanted him, but there was distance between them now that seemed unbridgeable by the light of day. John had always waited in the dark. He wasn't sure how to step out of it.

 _Start simple._ "Let me give you my number."

"I already have it."

John's number wasn't listed. He'd only just got it a couple of months ago, when he moved into the bedsit. But he supposed the rules didn't apply when it came to Sherlock Holmes. He laughed. "Why am I surprised?"

Sherlock smiled at him. It wasn't much, but it was something. "Goodnight, John."

"Good morning."

John wondered if it would always be like this, if he would always walk away when he wanted to stay, if he would let everything he felt sit unspoken in his chest and throat. It seemed like defeat.

There would be time for more, time for something different, he promised himself, as a made his way down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song from the chapter title and set quote is When You Rock and Roll With Me. The best version in my opinion is from David: Live. You can listen to it [here](https://youtu.be/lKGd-9BmwrA). 
> 
> The song John and Sherlock dance to is Heart of Gold by Neil Young, from Harvest. It's available [here](https://youtu.be/pO8kTRv4l3o). I listened to it about a hundred times while I was writing their dance scene.
> 
> While Britain decriminalised male homosexual acts in 1967, the laws were still incredibly restrictive until much later. You can read a bit about that [at the wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom#Decriminalisation_of_homosexual_acts) and [here](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60).


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

 

**Time**

 

 _Time - He's waiting in the wings_  
_He speaks of senseless things_  
_His script is you and me, boy_  
  
_Time - He flexes like a whore_  
_Falls wanking to the floor_  
_His trick is you and me, boy_

 

John slept and slept, sunk deep in benevolent dreams. He surfaced slowly to the sound of a male voice droning in the corner of his room. He didn't remember turning the radio on before he crashed, but he must have.

He opened his eyes to the ripe afternoon sunlight illuminating the wall by his bed. It shone on his back, heating him through. He'd pushed the blanket down, leaving only the thin sheet draped over his hips.

He lingered in the bubble of light and warmth. He stretched, toes pointed, arms splayed, wondering what the hell the radio announcer was on about.

The voice wasn't a radio voice at all. It was low-level, monotonous, and rapidfire.

"Of course it's Keats. It was always Keats who was ready for a fight. You can't write a phrase like 'to set budding more, and still more later flowers for the bees' without getting some of the anger out, some of the rage and terror of childhood. What of those who never do, John?"

At the sound of his name John rolled over, squinting against the light.

Someone crouched four feet from the bed.

He scrambled back against the wall, all systems on alert, his breath punching out of him. Someone had broken in while he slept.

He'd gotten his feet under him and his fist cocked, ready to fight, when he realized the man wasn't moving to attack, when he realized who it was.

Sherlock sat in the armchair under the window, sunlight skimming the top of his head, setting his wild hair aglow. His bare feet were tucked up under him, shiny red platform boots slung carelessly on the floor. He stared into the middle distance, holding one half of a conversation which had apparently been going on for some time.

"What of those who never get it out, but still have it trapped inside them, or have more added to their burden? This world is treacherous. It's a trap we're talking about here, of course, a very specific type of trap that involves the flesh itself, John."

The fight rushed out of John's body in one go. He sat back against the wall, hands soft, heart tender.

How delicate this moment was, like spider silk, easy to tear or break.

John knew what he should say. _What are you doing here?_ would be a reasonable question, as would _How did you get in?_

He couldn't bring himself to care about any of that. Sherlock spoke like some ancient oracle, poetically, madly, of things John couldn't grasp, and he simply wanted to listen.

"They say it's like dying in slow motion, suffocation, especially that kind, no killer, no water to drown you, just the refusal of the body, the refusal to breathe. One victim said falling ill was like the devil going through his body, shooting all the lights out. A fantastic turn of phrase, but where else can you turn when the unthinkable is happening to you, but to the fantastic, John? Then those tanks. The necessary isolation. What you wouldn't do for some attention. And here he comes, someone who talks to you. Tells you things. Makes you think about things in a whole new way. Like a monster from a fairy story."

John couldn't resist speaking any longer. He had no idea what Sherlock was saying, but he would play along if it meant they could talk.

"Is it?" he whispered, his voice heavy with sleep, and so many other things. "Is that what it's like?"

The change in Sherlock's face was like watching rain fall across a still lake.

"What did you say?"

John pulled the sheet around him. He shivered as he remembered the feeling of Sherlock pressed against him on the seedy sofa in the corner of the bar. Maybe he had misunderstood what came after. Maybe he didn't understand a damn thing.

He was learning to like being pulled apart by desire.

"I asked you if whatever you're talking about was really like a fairy story. With a monster."

Sherlock blinked. "Come with me to Great Ormond Street Hospital. We have some business in the basement there. For the case."

***

In the brief tube ride from John's flat, John imagined Sherlock wanted him to come to the hospital so John could flash his ID around or pretend to have some authority. Instead, Sherlock used a key to open a service door, then winged them through a series of disinfectant scented corridors with no trouble at all.

John found himself trailing after Sherlock like a puppy, running to catch up as he moved impossibly fast in those red platform boots.

Those boots. In those boots, Sherlock was an alien from the sex dimension. It didn't help that he wore them laced up over thin cotton trousers and a striped long-sleeved shirt, collar out to the caps of his shoulders, everything tight, buttons straining. By the time they'd climbed down a crumbling staircase to the level under the mortuary, John had imagined undoing all Sherlock's buttons, twice over.

The basement was like a cavern, the kind of abandoned place where people put things so they could forget them. The sound of trickling water echoed from stone walls. It was almost completely dark. The one switch they'd found powered a single naked bulb at the bottom of the stairs, its light unable to reach the far corners of the massive room.

Sherlock moved into the dark like a dog after a scent, relentless, navigating his way around rows of rusted metal shelving. The light from his torch bounced crazily. 

John stumbled over a crack in the floor, falling behind. He hadn't thought to bring a torch. He was quite sure he didn't own one.

"Here," Sherlock called from a dim corner.

By the time John reached him, Sherlock had opened the end panel of an iron lung. The torch shone through the two observation windows high on the side of the huge metal cylinder, casting strange shadows.

Iron lungs always looked to John like some kind of submersible device, a submarine built for one. They used air pressure to expand and contract the patient's body, drawing air in and out when the muscles involved in breathing failed.

John still remembered Lucy Edgewater, ten years old, his classmate who'd caught polio in the summer holidays, during one of the final years of the epidemic. She'd spent a month in an iron lung. She'd pulled through, returning to school that autumn weak and pale. She was one of the lucky ones.

He touched the curved metal, imagining what it must have been like for a child to be stuck in there for weeks, listening to the sounds of the motors working, the hush and whir of air moving in and out. Waiting for nerves to heal, for muscles to decide to start working again.

"No," Sherlock said as he closed the door on the unit he'd been examining. He went to the next, identical to the first, opened it, and stuck his head inside.

John's breath caught as the light from Sherlock's torch briefly illuminated a deep corridor lined with machines. There had to be thirty or forty at least, arranged in a row that stretched back into the darkness. Once the polio epidemic receded, hospital admin would have needed a place to store these, John supposed. They were too expensive to get rid of altogether. There was always a chance they might be needed again.

Still, none of that explained why Sherlock had brought them here. "Sorry, what are we looking for?"

Sherlock shut the door on the second unit. "Evidence." His lanky legs disappeared, boots and all, as he climbed into the next iron lung.

As dates went, this had to be the most bizarre one John had ever experienced. At least he couldn't claim to be bored.

"So this is what you were talking about, back at my place? Spinal polio. Damage to the spinal nerves causing muscle weakness in the diaphragm and trunk. The inability to breathe. Suffocation."

"You follow." Sherlock said, shining his torch into another iron lung.

John didn't. "The epidemic was mostly over by the end of the 1950s. These machines haven't been in operation for at least a decade. What kind of evidence are we looking for? Evidence of what, exactly?"

Sherlock slid out of the iron lung and moved to the next one. Here they were, buried together under a modern hospital, where no one could possibly find them. It was dank and bleak and more than a bit creepy, and John wished he could think about something besides taking Sherlock's face in his hands and kissing those bee stung lips until they were red and chafed.

"A point of origin, John. The beginning of an experiment in human psychology so cruel and so long it's foiled the police for decades. So large that no investigation would be able to track it, not fully. Lestrade has his suspicions. It's why he's been trying to interest me in it."

"Because he consults you? He brings cases to you?"

Sherlock's eyebrows quirked. "He started as a fan."

He opened the next iron lung and climbed in.

"A fan?"

Sherlock's voice echoed from the inside the metal cylinder. "Molly told him about me. He was stuck on a case. Double murder. He came to a show, and I solved it for him during my set. Since then he's worked with me from time to time. This is his pet project, something he's been trying to solve, or I should say something he's been stumbling into, since he joined Scotland Yard two years ago."

John remembered the photos from the night before. "I thought this was all about connections between cases."

Sherlock moved on to the next iron lung, but paused before he opened its hatch. He stood close to John, his gaze intent, his voice tipped with excitement.

" _A_ connection, singular."

"So wait—you know what connects those cases you showed me last night?"

"I do."

"So why ask me to look for something? Why pretend you don't know?"

Sherlock went very still, his face, dimly lit by the torch, impossible to read. "I will tell you. I'll explain everything, John, but for now it must be kept from Lestrade, and Molly too. Anything she knows, she would tell him. He wouldn't understand, and won't, until I get further along in my investigation."

"Wait, _he_ won't understand, but I'm supposed to?"

"Police, John. Their training is entirely evidence based. You, you're different. Military, yes, med school, yes, but you don't simply look at evidence, do you?"

John blinked. "I can't think what you mean."

"You're intuitive, John. You think in broad strokes. You look at problems globally."

The skeptic in him wanted to protest, but he had to admit that Sherlock was right. He'd certainly learned to pay attention to the nagging sense that something was off kilter, with a patient, or with people he'd spent time with. Equally he'd sought the (much more rare) moments when everything inside him said _yes_. "I suppose."

"Yes, John. I see it. I see you. And I'm counting on you. Do you agree?"

"Agree to what, exactly?"

"We wait to talk to Lestrade. Everything I show you here, everything I tell you today, must be kept in confidence. Do you agree?"

John shrugged, but a thrill ran through him. Anything to know more. _Yes. Tell me everything._ "It's your case."

Sherlock clapped him on the shoulder. "Good." He opened the door to the next iron lung. "Even Lestrade couldn't imagine how large this is. I'm not sure myself. It's by sheer coincidence I've been able to get as far as I have on it."

"What do you mean, coincidence?"

"I've been tracking this for some time now. Half my life, as it turns out."

Before John could ask what he meant, Sherlock pulled himself into the machine.

"Ah!" he said, his voice triumphant. "Here!"

He shimmied from the iron lung feet first, and handed John the torch. "Go ahead," he said. "Take a look and tell me what you see."

John took the torch and stepped up to the hatch. Sherlock didn't step back, so he had to move into him. It was the closest they'd been since the night before, since the broken down sofa at the bar. John's breath caught in his throat. Sherlock could have him twelve different ways, right here, right now, if he wanted to.

If only he wanted to. Did he want to? 

"Am I looking for something specific?" John's voice was rough, thick with desire, and Sherlock must know it, he must.

"You'll have to climb in and turn back toward the opening."

"Have I mentioned I've got a fear of enclosed spaces?"

"You don't. You have an intermittent psychosomatic limp and occasional night terrors, but other than that you're rather fearless, or else I wouldn't have asked you here. Frightened people make mistakes and get caught, and it would be most inconvenient if we were arrested for trespassing just when things are getting interesting."

"Arrested? I thought this was part of a police investigation. Besides, you have a key. You let us in here."

"Keys don't mean much. Anyone can get a key. And the investigation is unofficial, remember? Just because you have one detective inspector on your side doesn't mean you've wooed the whole of the Met."

John blinked into the darkness. "Fearless? Do you think so?"

"Certainly. Now prove me right and climb in."

John crawled into the iron lung, the light from the torch bouncing crazily off the smooth metal interior, warmth bursting through his chest.

He turned onto his back so he could look at the entrance from the inside.

The area around the hatch was filled with a child's drawings, scratched into the white enameled surface, perhaps with a pin or some other sharp instrument. The torch illuminated the same pattern, over and over. At first all John saw was circles within circles, and then he noticed the mouths. The pattern was the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail.

What business would a child have drawing that design?

John slid forward, landing on the floor beside Sherlock. "All right. Do you know what it means?"

"I do. And I'm willing to bet that there are at least two more iron lungs in this basement that have that symbol scratched on them."

They kept searching until they found the units Sherlock was looking for. Sure enough, there were two more, each with crude drawings of the same image.

John ran his fingers over the numbered plate on the last of the iron lungs. All of them had an ID number. "Should we write these down? Could be important."

"Yes, good," Sherlock said. "I've got them."

"You're just going to remember?"

Sherlock paused before he answered, standing a little straighter, defiant. "You don't believe it."

John smiled. "You're unbelievable. But I'm getting used to that."

***

They emerged onto the street by a side door, squinting against the early evening sunlight.

"Is that it then?" John asked. "What happens now?"

"I know a woman in the patient records office, but she only works weekday mornings," Sherlock said. "I'll have to wait until tomorrow to follow up on this."

John looked down the street. A pair of young women in nurse's uniforms sauntered across the road, perhaps on a break. An older couple, hand in hand, dressed in light summer clothes, emerged from the hospital entrance and walked off toward Russell Square. Humidity hung in the air, rendering everything hazy and slow. A beautiful day, and no one had any idea of the drama hidden in the dark below their feet.

John's stomach growled audibly.

"You're hungry."

He smiled at Sherlock. "I suppose I am." He hadn't eaten since yesterday evening. "You?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Let's get you something."

They found a café around the corner, a dingy place with torn vinyl seats and a tiny menu written on a chalk board. They both ordered coffee. Sherlock didn't order food.

John settled on asking for extra. He planned to split it. He didn't have a lot of money, but he could handle feeding Sherlock up a bit.

When the food came, he spread strawberry jam over toast and pushed the plate across the table. He started in on his omelette with a plan to finish half of it.

"No," Sherlock said.

"Not hungry?"

Sherlock was thin to the point of emaciation. It was probably part of being a musician, that lean aesthetic, but still, no call for total starvation.

"I don't eat when I'm on a case. It slows me down."

John smiled at him. "I thought you said you'd been dealing with this for years." He pushed the plate a little closer to Sherlock's elbow, which rested squarely in the centre of his placemat. "So you must have eaten at some point during."

Sherlock turned his eyes to a crack in the wall beside their table. "Technically true, yes."

"And you can't work on it again until you get in touch with this records person."

A smile quirked up the corner of Sherlock's mouth. "True."

God. Everything he did was handsome. The things he did to tease and amaze, the invasive, presumptuous things, and the small gestures. How could one person be this lovely? John couldn't begin to guess.

"It would be nice to share this."

Sherlock picked up a piece of toast. At first John thought he might just break it into pieces and leave it on the plate, but he actually began to eat. After a few minutes John slid his plate into the centre of the table, and to his surprise Sherlock picked up a fork and took a few bites of egg and fried tomato. He picked at the mushrooms and accepted a second piece of toast.

John tried to keep from smiling. He'd never pictured himself spending this kind of time with a bloke. He could get used to it. He could.

Soon enough the plates were almost empty. Nothing for it but to draw out the conversation as much as possible. He hoped Sherlock was game.

"Can you tell me what that was all about? Looking for children's drawings in iron lungs?"

Sherlock's brow furrowed, and he studied his coffee mug. "I can." A wince flickered at the corner of his eye. "It's personal."

John had never been the kind of man in whom others confided their secrets. He supposed he'd never wanted the responsibility. He did now. He thought he did.

When he looked up, Sherlock was tugging at his collar, opening buttons with his long fingers. John looked around the café. A square looking bloke at the table across from them shot them a suspicious look.

Sherlock pulled the shirt down and turned his bare left shoulder toward John. There, on the pale surface of his upper arm, was a black circle tattoo. John leaned in, but even before he picked out the details—the reptilian mouth biting the tail, the fine scales—he knew what it was.

"I see." He tried to keep his voice steady, but all he could think about was the monster from the fairy tale Sherlock had described. Something—someone—lurked in the dark. "There's some connection between the kids in the iron lungs and you." He cocked his head. "I'm guessing you weren't one of them. You were born too late. Would have missed the epidemic, probably."

Sherlock shrugged back into his shirt. "Fortunately. Those drawings were made years before I got this. But you're right, there is a connection." He stared at the formica table top, brushed the chipped edge with his fingertips. "The person who told them about the ouroboros. It was his symbol."

John's stomach turned. "You knew him."

"I did." Sherlock's voice dropped in pitch and volume. John had to lean in to catch what he was saying. "He was six years older than me. Impressive. Lots of theories about the world, about the way people think, their inner workings. How to take advantage of them."

Sherlock rubbed his fingers over his upper arm, tracing the circle of the ouroboros through his sleeve. "In alchemy, the snake that eats its own tail is a symbol of transformation. To make oneself into something new, to transcend the human. James had his own interpretation of what that meant."

"That was his name? James?"

"James Moriarty."

Goosebumps broke out over John's arms, and across the nape of his neck.

"He thought that in order to master oneself, one must dominate others. He worked out a system for hollowing people out, turning them into whatever he wanted."

John longed to take Sherlock's hand, to stop the movement of his fingers over his arm. "What happened? Did he—what did he do?"

Sherlock frowned at the table. "He claimed me, for lack of a better term." His eyes moved up to study John's mouth. "I was twelve when we met. At first I was a protégé of sorts."

A hollow feeling settled in John's belly. He forced himself to sit still and listen.

"He took me for someone like him. A psychopath. I can't blame him. We were both in hospital for psychiatric evaluation. I did everything I could to emulate him."

Sherlock's smile was soft, his tone determined.

"It was a bewildering time, being on the ward. They had us both in with the adults. Quite the introduction to aberrant psychology. Doctors never could agree on what was wrong with me, although I did receive some rather dire assessments. As it turns out, it's a bad idea to ask one's teacher about the availability of human fetuses for a student project."

John had to laugh at that. "You didn't."

"I did, unfortunately."

John smiled, trying to imagine Sherlock as a defiant child, full of stroppy demands and peculiar interests. "How long were you in hospital?"

"Six months. Long enough to learn about this symbol, and everything it meant to James."

"But you didn't get that tattoo when you were twelve."

"No. Later."

"Did you keep in touch with him then? After you got out?"

Sherlock nodded. He looked past John, toward the dirty window at the front of the café. "I helped orchestrate his release." He smiled at John's shocked expression. "A bit of a challenge for a boy, but less difficult than you'd think. Even then, James was a mastermind. He told me what to do and I did it. I was fascinated by how easy it was."

John cleared his throat. "And then?"

"And then he got a room in a boarding house near the school I attended and I spent as much time as I could with him, for the next four years. His theories fascinated me. He...fascinated me. When I was fifteen, I got this." His fingers pressed the circle of the tattoo through his shirt.

"I believed in him," he continued. "We _were_ better than everyone else, because we were smarter." Sherlock picked up speed as he spoke in hushed tones. "The rules didn't apply to us. Ordinary people were only half alive, stuck in their small ways of thinking. Not us. During those years I taught myself to read people, the beginning of my studies in criminality. As it turned out, a useful skill, and one I excelled at. The better I got at it, the more proof I thought I had that he was right—we _were_ not just different, but better."

John reached for some handy reassurances, but found he had none. Most teenagers went through a phase where they didn't care about anything but themselves. He certainly had. But the way Sherlock was talking, this was a whole other level, his relationship with this older boy, this man.

Sherlock studied the crack in the wall beside him and traced it with his fingers. "Then he started his game. That's what he called it. The Great Game." Sherlock enunciated each word distinctly. "He had me go through my class list and tell him about all the other boys. He was deciding, you see. Choosing his first victim. At least, I thought it was his first."

Sherlock swallowed coffee and studied John for a long moment before he continued speaking. "Eventually James chose Carl Powers, an athlete, on the swim team. Popular, but he spoke to me sometimes nonetheless. Even before we started to work on him, Carl tried to befriend me. I still don't know why."

John pictured Sherlock at school: tall, awkward, probably, before he'd grown into himself, before fashion had finally caught up to him, all hard edges and big drama and so damn pretty. He couldn't imagine a version of Sherlock that all the boys wouldn't either want to get to know for less than straightforward reasons, or try to beat up on a regular basis.

"James made me bring Carl along when we spent time together. That's how it started." Sherlock picked at the crack in the plaster with a fingernail. White dust sprinkled down onto the table top.

John tried to keep the alarm from his voice. His stomach crawled. "What happened?"

"For lack of a better way of putting it, he changed Carl's mind. He took it apart, piece by piece, and replaced it with something untenable."

Sherlock picked up his mug, sipped coffee. John did the same. It had grown cold. John's mouth was dry.

"Carl hanged himself in the pool's locker room at our school. He was a swimmer once. Then he wasn't anything at all."

Sherlock rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, as if warding off a headache. In the long pause that followed, John watched the top of Sherlock's head, those dark curls, and wanted more than anything to understand the tangle of his mind.

"What did you do?"

Sherlock paused. He folded his hands on the table and blinked down at them. "I woke up. It was like a spell had been broken. We argued. I told James I would turn him in, but what could I do, really? I was still a kid, and there was no proof, no obvious crime. James was twenty-two by then. No one was keeping track of him any more, not his doctors, not the police. When he disappeared, I was the only one who noticed."

"So he just vanished?"

Sherlock's knuckles were white. He nodded. "Although I hated what he'd done, I missed him, terribly. He was the only person who paid me any attention. When he was gone, I didn't know what to do with myself."

John reached out a finger and touched the back of Sherlock's hand. It was only a touch, the smallest of gestures, and totally inadequate.  

The square-looking bloke from the table opposite stood and stalked past them, muttering "faggots" under his breath as he headed for the door.

Sherlock stared defiantly at the back of the bloke's head, the vulnerability on his face dissolving into something sour.

John withdrew his hand. "These cases then. You think he had something to do with them?"

"I think James started his study of human nature much earlier than Carl Powers. He'd been in the hospital before, in and out since he was eight. Violent behaviour, before he learned to control himself. Those drawings we found today are proof that he spent some time in the polio ward, influencing a select few children who were there for treatment. He never had polio, so he probably snuck in after hours, or better yet, volunteered to read to them or something equally saccharine. That would be more his style."

"Influencing how? Are you saying he made them kill themselves? All those people from the photos last night?"

"Yes, almost certainly. And I'm very sure that the three posed in the sitting room will turn out to be the former occupants of those iron lungs we saw today."

John shook his head. It was all moving too fast.

"So they did have post-polio syndrome?"

"Two did. Molly found muscle wasting in the two freshest corpses. The first to die was too deteriorated for her to be certain."

"How did you know to look?"

"A detail in the police report. The most recent corpse had a biography of Jonas Salk on his lap."

"Oh," John said. "The inventor of the polio vaccine. Still, it's just a book. Could mean anything, couldn't it?"

"To someone who'd never been involved with James Moriarty, it would probably mean nothing at all. But it was a message for me, and to me it meant one very specific thing. What we found today confirms it. It's him. It's James, and he's playing his game once more. Do you see? He's telling me it's him. His way of saying hello, directing me back to the hospital where we met." Sherlock's expression was grim.

"How did he make them do it? Set them off? After all these years? Do you think he stayed in touch with them?"

Sherlock shook his head. "He always talked about making a time bomb in human form, someone who would appear completely normal but then would go off whenever he needed or wanted them to, in whatever way he wanted them to. The bomb victims might be a sort of pun, a play on that idea. It's done using a trigger, John. A word, a turn of phrase, even an image. It wouldn't have to be James who set them off. He would just have to arrange for them to be exposed to the trigger. Anyone could do that."

"Who would agree to it though?" John tried to imagine someone so perverse they wouldn't mind ending an innocent life.

"Anyone might do it without knowing it. A whispered phrase, passed on, a message from an old friend, an ad placed in the lonely hearts column that the victim is sure to read. That's all it would take. And I wouldn't think James is alone in all this. He's probably gathered some like minded people around him, who would be willing to do anything for the sake of the game, or for James himself. He's insane, but not without his charms."

A thick black rope of loathing twisted in John's chest. He hated the idea that Sherlock had ever found such an obvious monster charming.

The whole thing was incredible, too bizarre to be true. And yet there were the corpses. There were the drawings in the iron lungs. "I don't understand. How can someone walk around with something this big in their minds and not know it? Why don't they know they're being triggered?"

Sherlock touched the tattoo through his sleeve. "Have you ever had a dream so real, you accepted it completely? And then you woke up, and found yourself in the daylight, and the fragments of the dream faded and broke, until you didn't remember it clearly at all?" He watched John, waiting for a reaction.

"Yes. Of course."

"We're not one person, John, none of us are. We're fragments that we string together. We tell ourselves it all makes sense, but there are gaps. Inconsistencies."

John nodded. He certainly couldn't claim to be free of contradictions.

Sherlock sighed. "Those whom James worked on, they're simply less coherent than the rest of us."

"Jesus."

John sat back in his chair. This mind control stuff, it all sounded like some rumour out of John's time in the army. Everyone knew there'd been government experiments with psychedelic drugs and extreme conditions, especially in the '50s and '60s, to explore how far people could be reshaped. That was mostly Porton Down spy stuff, as far as John understood it, and largely exaggerated. John had never believed it was truly possible to make a man do something he otherwise wouldn't have, but he knew plenty of people who did.

Sherlock leaned across the table, his tone more animated now. "What we are seeing could be the beginning of something massive. The Great Game to end all Great Games."

"It's not over?"

Sherlock looked at him with wide eyes. "I doubt it will ever be, so long as James is in the world."

"But we only found three iron lungs with those drawings. Three victims."

"You know what they say about mice in your flat, John. If you see one, there are probably more. The bomb victims, and the woman in her tub, as well as these three. A plethora of victims, do you see? But there's no purpose to it, no end achieved, except a show of power only I would recognize. Well, me and Lestrade, but he's just poking around the edges. There will be a pattern, a scheme to it. I just need to figure it out. Once I have it, I'll be able to predict what comes next, and that's where the Met comes in. If we know the pattern, we might be able to stop him. There's no doubt in my mind, though. He's escalating. Some people just can't help themselves."

"You know all this because of what he did to you. You were part of it too." John couldn't ask what he wanted to: how far, exactly, had Moriarty taken his experiments with Sherlock?

"That's the part I can never tell Lestrade. Do you understand? Working on this is dangerous, but anyone who knows the real game is especially at risk. The less Lestrade knows, the better."

"You told me."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "All right?"

Uncertainty fluttered in John's belly, then settled into something warm and substantial. He'd already decided Sherlock was mad. Ultimately, the reasons why only made him more interesting.

His life had been so dull since he left the army. He dreaded each day, the terrible slow grind of nothing. Predictable, all of it had seemed utterly obvious, a long straight line that would take him to the grave. Now this, this was something amazing. This was something new. "God yes."

Sherlock smiled at him. "Good."

John longed to reach across the table and take Sherlock's hands. He settled on leaning forward on his elbows. He was full of nervous excitement now. "What do you do with all this? With everything you've been through?"

"Our experiences shape us, John. We can't escape them. We can only use them."

"How?"

Sherlock sat up in his chair, returning to the proud posture John was learning to adore. "I make deductions. As the police are generally useless at their jobs, I try to help them. And now I have a chance to stop perhaps the most dreadful experiment in human psychology in the history of the world. Whatever's left over goes into my music. As you've seen there's a lot of crossover."

Something John had held tight inside him broke open, and he found himself laughing. He'd been so caught up in the story, in the question of what Sherlock had suffered, and what it had done to his mind. John had personal tragedy in his past too, nothing as dramatic as an epic affair with a budding criminal mastermind, but bad enough.

"You're amazing."  

Sherlock looked down at his hands, at the empty plates on the table. "I hear that a lot, but not because of this." He allowed his gaze to slip up to John's mouth again.

"It's true," John said. "Incredible. I can't imagine how you managed."

Sherlock frowned. "I had less difficulty than others." He blinked rapidly. "James held me as precious to him. In some ways he probably still does."

A surge of emotion ran through John. He would stand by Sherlock's side and help him, protect him, if he could.

Sherlock watched him, his eyebrows quirked together, his lips pressed in a resigned bow. John had no doubt that everything he felt showed, his eagerness for more easy to read in the forward cant of his body, his loosely folded hands. The corner of Sherlock's mouth slid up, the smallest of smiles.

Everything John wanted to know, all the answers to his questions, were there already, right there, in the best way, all gloriously unspoken and so very real.

Nothing else mattered.

"Okay," John said. "Okay then."

***

The square-looking bloke in the jean jacket was waiting for them outside, leaning up against the entry of an alley half a street down.

"Oi," he said. "Nancy boys." He was partially hidden in shadow.

John took a few steps into the alley, his hand clenched in a fist. For the first time in a long while, it wasn't a spasm.

The bloke was at least as tall as Sherlock, and about three stone heavier. He spat on the ground, and laughed at John. "You the man then? This one's got to be the girl."

"John," Sherlock said, standing behind him now. "Hit him if you must, but I wouldn't put too much stock in any opinion offered by an underemployed baker who steals from the tip jar at work and still lives with his mother."

The bloke took a step back, stared at Sherlock, his mouth in a feckless gape. John shot Sherlock a look. "With his mum?"

"Duck," Sherlock said.

John turned back just in time for the underemployed baker's fist to glance off his cheek. It wasn't as direct a hit as it could have been, but it made him stumble.

The next thing he knew, Sherlock's red platform bootheel struck the bloke's leg at the knee, bending it inward at an impossible angle. The bloke shouted and crumpled.

John's head swam with the blow. Yes: a fight. Just what he wanted, what he always wanted. He was a little surprised by Sherlock's kick, but he should have guessed that the boots weren't just for show. Neither was Sherlock, evidently. John could have shouted for joy.

Instead he stepped in and struck the underemployed baker, punching down and across his cheekbone. The man fell face first into the pavement and lay there, moaning pitifully.

The two of them stood back and admired their handiwork.

"That will teach him to act on his latent homosexual urges in such an aggressive manner," Sherlock said.

John laughed and shook out his fist. His knuckles were going to be sore. As was his face.

"You're bleeding." Sherlock reached out and touched John's cheek, showed him the trace of blood. "You could probably use some ice. There will be swelling."

John nodded, giddy. "We should get out of here. I'm sure he'll sort himself out soon enough."

"My place is closer," Sherlock said. He watched John's face closely. His words were casual enough, but there was a formal edge to the way he said them. "If you're not busy."

"All right."  

The adrenaline of the fight burned through John's veins. Everything was sharp as a needle, bright and clear. The world was different now than it had been before he walked into that bar two days ago. It was as if the atmosphere had changed, as if it had transformed into something so much more attuned to his system. 

He knew one thing: if he ended up alone with Sherlock Holmes, he would withhold nothing. Whatever Sherlock wanted was okay with him. Better than okay.

They walked up to Euston Square station and took the tube a few stops west to Baker Street. John followed Sherlock up the station stairs, his breathlessness nothing to do with how fast they moved.

They fell into step as they walked down the sidewalk, the heels of Sherlock's formidable boots striking the pavement. John thought he could get used to this: going places with Sherlock, being with him in every way possible, as much as possible.

"That thing you did back there, the way you dealt with that arse," John said, unsure how he would finish his sentence.

"Yes?" A smile curled at the side of Sherlock's mouth.

"That was impressive. I never thought—" He didn't know how to say what he wanted.

"Didn't think I could fight?"

John laughed. "If I'd thought about it, I would have guessed you'd have a trick or two up your sleeve. No one who can move like you do could be totally defenseless."

Sherlock's laugh was full-throated and deep. It went straight to John's lower belly and spread like warm fingers.

"I meant the way you read him. Everything you said about him was true, wasn't it? I saw it on his face. It couldn't be more clear. What you can do, it's like a weapon, isn't it?"

Sherlock stopped walking and turned to face John. "For those who aren't comfortable with themselves, what I do feels like an attack."

John looked down at Sherlock's hands. His elegant hands, there for John to reach out and hold.

He wanted to be that man, who would take on all the tossers in the world if he could just own his desires. He cleared his throat. He'd never been that bold.

All that was left was to burn under Sherlock's gaze, knowing he could read the finest detail of John's life down to the last letter. So John stood his ground, and knew he was exposed, and he hoped. This much he knew: if Sherlock was reading him now, it was fine. If anyone could understand him, Sherlock could. He wanted understanding, of everything small and sad and tired, and large and fierce and true in him. 

Sherlock sighed. "John, I know what I appear to be and what that means to most people. You've probably made up your mind about me, but I want you to know that things are not always as they seem. I'm not always what I seem."

"I think I get that," John said. "Everyone has a past, Sherlock. Maybe not as strange as yours, but it's okay."

"No," Sherlock said.

"No?"

"I wish I could explain, but there's not enough time. Or I should say, this is not the time, and I'm not sure how I would explain, if I could. I'm sorry, John. I have never told anyone the things I told you today. There's more, but it's difficult."

"It's okay." Tenderness flooded through John. He swallowed against it.

"I only wish to say, I hope, if things seem amiss, you'll understand."

"You've said a lot. I'm sure that's not all of it, but—" He'd never been a patient man, or especially kind. No one had ever asked him to be.

Sherlock tipped his head to the side and reached out as if he meant to touch John's cheek, but dropped his hand. "That's starting to bruise,” he said. “Come on. Just a little further to go."

They were almost all the way down the block when Sherlock stopped abruptly.

Outside a tall row house, a man in a three-piece suit stood, leaning against the door frame. The house number was 221B.

"Honestly," the man said, putting away a pocket watch. "I expected you minutes ago." He eyed John with a bland expression. "Ah. You're preoccupied."

"Go away," Sherlock said.

The man smirked. "Are we trying friends again? Do you really think that's wise? You remember what a disaster it was last time. And I see you've spent much of your day together. What can it mean?"

Sherlock drew himself up. "What do you want?"

"Nothing unexpected, I assure you," the man said. "I'll only take a few moments of your time, if your—friend—will be so kind as to wait."

Sherlock turned to John. "It's probably best if I deal with this intrusion on my own. Can you wait here for me?"

John took a step back. Older man, obvious sense of entitlement to Sherlock's time. His stomach flipped. It certainly fit with what Sherlock had said about James Moriarty. "Sherlock, is that him?" He whispered it, ready to fight.

Sherlock shot John a worried look. "Him? No. Of course not. He's not important at all."

The man's eyebrows shot up. It was clear he and Sherlock had some kind of prior arrangement.

John should have guessed. This was a posh address, in a posh part of town, well beyond what a musician could possibly afford. He couldn't help looking the suit up and down. He was a haughty fellow, all puckered expression and pretense. God.

This must be what Sherlock was talking about. _If things seem amiss_. _Amiss_ wasn't the term for it. Fucking tragic, more like.

It sounded like the man knew about Sherlock's past, too. How could that be, if Sherlock had never told anyone else? Black disappointment, cold and thick, filled John's veins, scrubbing out everything good.

Sherlock still glared at the older man, the two of them watching each other, locked in conflict: resentment on Sherlock's part, condescension clear in the other man's posture, in the tilt of his head, and in his hands, loosely joined on the handle of his umbrella.

John didn't want to give himself time to imagine those limp hands on Sherlock. He took a deep breath, certain he'd be spending his evening doing exactly that, and wishing he could die.

"I get it," John said. "I do. It's fine. I'll just—I'll head back, and I'll see you later. Okay? Maybe, yeah. Another time."

He couldn't wait for a response. He couldn't look to see if Sherlock tried to stop him. He turned and walked toward home, his face throbbing and his heart numb.

Sherlock didn't so much as call his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song this chapter takes its title from is Time, one of David Bowie's creepiest and best. It's on the record Aladdin Sane. You can listen to [the album version here](https://youtu.be/R0qIwxihROw). There's also a [great performance version with dancers in camouflage onesies and Bowie's infamous firecrotch unitard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm4IQSs4GN0).
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

 **Chapter Four: A Million Dead End Streets**  
  
  
_Still don't know what I was waiting for_  
_And my time was running wild_  
_A million dead end streets_  
_And every time I thought I'd got it made_  
_It seemed the taste was not so sweet_  
_So I turned myself to face me_  
_But I never caught a glimpse_  
_Of how the others must see the faker_  
_I'm much too fast to take that test_

 Monday meant bland routine. John woke to the harsh bell of his alarm, showered, and drank instant coffee. No proper breakfast, just an apple cut into slices and eaten hastily, while he leaned against the wall next to the table that held his hotplate and toaster. His stomach complained, squeezing painfully against what felt like shards of glass.

He couldn't think about Sherlock any more.

Instead he focused on getting out the door, one foot in front of the other, his pace even as he joined the morning foot traffic. Congestion on the tube, people in tasteful suits, conservative dresses. Everyone trying to look nice, to fit in. He was no different in his dress shirt and trousers, embracing uniformity.

He bored himself.

He climbed the stairs at St. Paul's Station. The thin early morning light seemed to promise something: a new start, time spent practising what he'd learned, a hard day's work.

He wanted none of it.

He wanted one thing: that blade-sharp feeling of being truly alive, sunk into the rich and heady confusion of the world in which he'd spent the past two days. His leg cramped painfully as he walked down the street toward the hospital entrance. He dug in, forced it to work, forced himself to put weight on it.

In the locker room, he traded his olive green cotton jacket, chosen for its resemblance to army gear, for his white lab coat. He arrived early in the conference room where his peers would gather, pulled out a chair, and sat listening to the ticking of the wall clock. It all seemed flimsy, part of some illusion he would never have recognized if it weren't for Sherlock.

Johnson and Nash jostled through the door, crowing noisily over some A&E incident. Just last week, John would have found their talk interesting, and might have felt jealous that he'd missed it, whatever it was. Less than seventy-two hours ago, he'd thought emergency medicine was the single most exciting thing in the world.

Now he could barely stand listening to Nash boast about correctly diagnosing aortic dissection.

"That arse from cardiology insisted it was a heart attack. If I'd listened to him, we'd have had a corpse on our hands."  

John shifted in his chair. Nash irritated him.

"Morning, Watson," Johnson said, pulling out the chair next to him. "You missed some fun yesterday."

"Morning." John forced a smile and nodded tersely. His hand spasmed, closing into a fist.

Nash frowned at it. "Muscle cramp?"

John grimaced. "Sutures all Saturday."

"Ah." Nash nodded, apparently sympathetic, but his gaze slid to John's hand as if it might bite.

Using his good hand, John forced the left one open, bending the fingers back to stretch them. In accordance with some complex inner alchemy, the hand eased, but his stomach clenched painfully and his chest muscles tightened.

A panic attack.

The air still flowed in and out through his nostrils; technically, he knew oxygen was reaching his lungs, but it didn't feel substantial enough. His ears buzzed.

He hadn't ever successfully stopped an attack, but he had hidden lots of them. He had pretended he was fine plenty of times.

"You have a rough day off?" Nash asked, grinning. "Up to no good?"

John forced a chuckle. "I'll never tell."

Last night, spent alone and awake, had done him in. Even now, he couldn't stop imagining Sherlock moaning under the touch of limp fingers, or unzipping woollen trousers, tugging them open—

"Morning," a brusque voice said. John looked up to see Brent Chapman, their consulting physician, surveying the room and waiting for silence.

Chapman talked them through some recent change in policy, and started going over their new assignments. John focused on his breathing, trying to slow it.

"Watson, you're on long term care now. See Biddle when you get there."

The unexpected information hit John's nervous system hard, compounding his sense of impending doom. He'd done a short stint in long term care already. What happened to his turn on orthopaedics, with Chapman?

He waited until the end of the meeting, when everyone was going their separate ways, to approach Chapman privately to ask about the change. Nash waited by the door. Apparently the ortho assignment had fallen to him.

Before John could open his mouth, Chapman clapped him on the back, jolting him. "Sorry Watson! Orders from above. Apparently you impressed someone the last time you were over there. Hope it's not too boring for you."

Chapman never complimented any of them, but there it was: a positive comment. John would take it, a tiny bright spot in a day that seemed fraught with obstacles, most of them his own making. He would have enjoyed the shocked look on Nash's face if he hadn't been crawling out of his skin.

He pushed through the door. "Thank you, Sir. Thanks. I'll head straight over there now."

He managed to get himself outside, into a small courtyard area between buildings, out by the bins and maintenance sheds. The only sounds were the steady hum of the air vents, and his ragged breath.

He began to calm as soon as he walked away from the main building. He moved slowly, willing himself to settle down.

Long term care would be just the thing. A quiet assignment might help him regain his footing. Chances were, he wouldn't see too many exciting cases. The people in long-term care needed maintenance, help with chronic issues, and sometimes, someone to talk to.

He was lousy at that.

Still, he'd done better yesterday, with Sherlock, hadn't he? He'd listened. He'd tried. It hadn't done him any good; he'd still bollocksed it up, gotten in too deep before he understood the situation. He'd run away when he should have stayed. Or he'd stayed too long when he should have left. Should've prepared himself better, should've thought it through. Maybe he'd thought it through too much.

He slowed as he approached the long term care building, pausing under a lone oak tree. It was bent and twisted, smaller than it should have been, growing in a tiny green space. A single park bench sat under it. Kind of a break area for staff or patients' families who wandered out the wrong side of the hospital, John supposed. It all looked neglected and wrongly placed.

_Like me._

***

Reception directed him to the third floor, palliative care. He'd been in long term care before, but never on a palliative ward. He tried to keep an open mind as he climbed the stairs.

All lives came to the point where there was no help for them, and all a doctor could do was ease suffering. Doctors might see themselves as saving lives, but in the end, no one was saved at all.

He paused on the landing, clutching the metal railing. He was approaching this all wrong, and he knew it. He was dragging his own feelings in where they didn't belong. He tried to take a deep breath.

He would do what he always did: take the job as it came, and deal with whatever happened, as well as he could. 

As he walked through the doors on the third floor, a solitary nurse, blonde hair pinned back in waves, looked up from the nurse's station. She was pretty, her smile genuine, unabashed. John couldn't help but smile back.

"Dr. Watson?" She carried a clipboard as she stepped forward to meet him, her movements efficient.

He shook her offered hand. Her grip was firm, her eyes bright. "Yes, Nurse...?"

"Morstan. I'm on days, just transferred in a month ago. We'll be spending a lot of time together for the next—however long you're here. So, Mary, please."

"John," he replied.

She gestured broadly at the floor. "Where would you like to start? There's no rush here, as I'm sure you're aware. Chart review maybe? Or meet some of the patients?"

John looked down the empty hallway that led to the patient rooms. It was completely silent, as if noise had ceased to exist.

"Should I wait for Dr. Biddle?"

Mary laughed and placed a hand on his arm. "We won't be seeing him today. He's on call if we need him, but unless something major happens—and nothing major happens here—it's just you and me. Nothing we can't handle on our own. Orderlies do most of the routine work."

 _Just you and me._ Her hand lingered. 

Normally he enjoyed any kind of flirtation. It passed the time and was harmless enough, but today it struck him wrong. The weekend had left him wrung out. He was a dry leaf, ready to crumble, unfathomably old and exhausted. He stepped back out of range.

Mary's warm smile held. Good. She wasn't put off at all. He'd probably read too much into it anyway. She was just being friendly. Wasn't that how normal people behaved?

They started with reviewing patient records. Mary sat him down at the desk behind the nurse's station with a small stack of files.

"How long is your rotation?" She leaned over to hand him another chart. "If you'll only be here for a short while, I could just give you a quick summary of all these."

He'd drifted through the meeting with Chapman, and failed to absorb most of what had been said. "I don't know. I'm on for the next ten days, at least."

John was far too aware of the softness of Mary's voice, the way her arm brushed across his chest as she reached for a pencil from the holder next to him. He wondered if he would have to say something to her. Now might be a good time to invent a girlfriend, or possibly a fiancée. ( _Or get a boyfriend_.)

He cleared his throat. "You might be stuck with me for a while."

She laughed, touched his arm. "I can think of worse people to be stuck with."

He pushed his chair back, creating more space between them. "Well, it's early days yet, isn't it? You might get tired of me sooner than you think."

She wore a crooked grin. She leaned in, showing a bit of cleavage, and spoke in a stage whisper. "I'm not naming names, but there was a Senior House Officer here a bit ago—tall bloke, red hair? He kept talking about how much better he was than the rest of you. I mean my God, ego is par for the course, but some people. As if you all weren't top of your class."

Nash, John thought. It had to be. Nash was tall and red-headed, and Mary's description certainly fit Nash's personality. He allowed himself a smile. Mary's grin grew a bit more toothsome.

"Well," he said. "Everyone's got bad habits, don't they? I'm sure you'll be sick of me soon enough."

She bit her lower lip. "We'll see about that."

There was something a little bit mercenary about her, he decided. He pushed his chair back a bit more before standing up. He knew well enough to use caution around anyone who tried to create intimacy by slagging third parties. If she talked behind Nash's back, chances were she'd talk behind John's, too.

There were fifty people in palliative care in the facility as a whole. Twelve, expected to pass very soon, occupied the floor John was in charge of. Three were cancer patients; two had emphysema; the rest were, for the most part, suffering from diseases common in older age. The one man under forty was in the final stages of motor neurone disease.

John spent the first day learning the routines, checking on medications, doing basic physical exams, and listening to any issues or complaints the patients had. Some of them were barely conscious at all; some seemed brighter, cheerful. Others wept and asked him repeatedly if there was anything he could do.

From a professional perspective, there wasn't much. He adjusted meds. He spoke to the orderlies. He asked after sleep patterns. He looked into the meal schedule. Those tasks took hardly any time at all. The day dragged, until his shift was over and Mary went home.

Unable to stand the idea of going back to his empty bedsit, he lingered on the floor, met the night nurse and orderlies. When he couldn't stay on his feet any longer, he found the disused on-call room. As he lay in the narrow bed, listening to the gentle bump and whir of the antique elevator, he thought about the fifth of vodka he kept stashed for emergencies in the top cupboard of his kitchenette, behind the battered plastic cups that had been there when he moved in. He wondered how comforting it might be to drown in it.

The on-call room was the safe option for many more reasons than his proclivity for drink. Much less chance he'd be invaded by young rock gods with tragic personal histories. If he was honest with himself, he also knew that staying away from his bedsit meant avoiding potential disappointment, if said young rock gods chose to avoid him altogether.

He slept poorly. Before dawn, he was awake again, haunting the floor, wandering up and down the hallway, peering into patient rooms. The dying slept a great deal. Maybe not deeply, maybe not well, but for great gouts of time. He envied them.

He took a fresh set of scrubs from the clean laundry, and showered in the room reserved for patient baths. He shaved his face in the bent metal mirror, avoiding looking himself in the eye. He ate minimally, a vending machine sandwich washed down with terrible instant coffee. 

Mary, who was on days, returned later in the morning, looking fresh and lovely. John found himself hanging about the nurse's station, talking idly with her. She had no end of entertaining stories and fascinating things to say. She'd travelled, spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe. She had family in America, so she'd spent a lot of time there too. She could do what sounded like an absolutely authentic American accent. She was fun.

She was also waiting for him to ask her out. Drinks after a shift, or dinner, maybe. She dropped hints. At the end of the day, she placed a hand on his arm.

"What's on for you tonight, then? Got a date?"

He smiled, looking down at the tiled floor. "Oh, I think I'll stay on for a bit longer. I'd like to make sure everything's good here, you know?"

She raised her eyebrows and smiled. "You'll wear yourself out at this rate."

"I'm fine," he said. "Could always do with more experience."

"More than one way to get that," she joked.

"Well," he said. He studied her shoes, white and low-heeled, practical. It was a bit too much. She had to know that.

"Goodnight then, Dr. Watson," she purred. She slipped her hand down his arm and sauntered away.

Over the next couple of days, John drifted out of her orbit, more and more reluctant to engage her in conversation, beyond a casual hello, or a few words about the patients. He moved in a dull fog, limbs heavy, taking his breaks by going into the on-call room and sitting on the edge of the cot, staring at the wall, until it was time to go back.

On Friday morning, he pulled up a chair next to Mr. Jenkinson's bed, and watched him breathe through his open mouth. Mr. Jenkinson hadn't achieved consciousness once in the five days John had been there. He was seventy-eight years old, a lifelong smoker, felled by habit. He had a wife who visited twice a week, and a son who worked in America. There was a picture of the three of them on Mr. Jenkinson's bedside table.

"Are you comfortable?" John asked him, listening to Mr. Jenkinson hitch and wheeze through one more breath, then another. Each seemed like it would be the last, like it couldn't possibly sustain him, but then the next would come, a miracle on the cusp of failure.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" John said, voice low, so as not to be heard down the hall, where Mary sat at the nurse's station.

He cocked an ear. Mary's voice tinkled down the hallway like a high-pitched bell, musical and bright. She was on the phone constantly, it seemed, talking to a host of friends and acquaintances.

Her interactions with the patients were matter-of-fact. Professional, but cold. Maybe she'd been in long term care too long. Maybe she'd learned to avoid becoming attached. John could understand that, but he found he wanted to move in the opposite direction. He lifted Mr. Jenkinson's hand from the blanket. It was cool and dry. He patted it.

"Just tell me what I can do," he whispered.

***

Time dragged. The light pouring in through the window at the end of the hall never seemed to move. John helped Mary arrange medications in paper cups on a tray. She delivered them after breakfast, and just before the evening meal. The white hallway absorbed all sound. Nothing changed, for better or for worse.

Between six and eight each evening, things were different. Although they had a small trickle of visitors during their open hours, most people shuffled in at the end of the day to see their loved ones. Some spoke with John, shook his hand, eyes serious as they asked questions. Some smiled and laughed and brought gifts of food, or books, or flowers. Others arrived, hats in hands, eyes downcast, as if rehearsing for a funeral.

One woman, Mrs. Clarke (sixty-seven, breast cancer, metastasized), had a steady stream of people filing in and out. She beamed out from the bed at each of them, embracing them, inviting them to sit, tell her about their day. John had just finished updating her daughter on Mrs. Clarke's condition (stable, some pain, managed in balance with her expressed desire to stay alert). He watched through the doorway of the room as a fat toddler, held in her mother's arms, screamed with joy and reached for Mrs. Clarke's hands.

In the room across the hall, a new patient, transferred the day before from a nearby nursing home, sat by himself in the orange vinyl armchair in the corner of his room. Mr. Lee Sparrow (ninety-two, multiple organ failure, extreme old age). He wore a brown housecoat over his hospital pyjamas. He waved to John.

John returned the wave and stepped into the room. A mug of tea sat on the utilitarian metal table beside Mr. Sparrow's armchair. The sky glowed outside his window, the late summer sun illuminating everything in slanting golden light. There was a nice view of the top of the oak tree in the courtyard. John could almost believe they were in a pleasant country retreat, were it not for the scent of disinfectant and the sounds of sirens outside.

"No visitors tonight?" John asked him.

Mr. Sparrow beamed up at him. "Just Nurse, and you."

"She brought you a cuppa, did she?" John pulled a hard-backed chair from the other corner of the room, and sat facing Mr. Sparrow.

"She did. Nothing's much wrong if you can still take tea."

John realised he was smiling despite himself. He'd only spoken to Mr. Sparrow briefly the day before, but he'd liked him immediately.

"If you don't mind me asking, Mr. Sparrow, do you have family? Friends? Anyone I can talk to about popping in to see you?"

Mr. Sparrow laughed. "I've outlived them all, Dr. Watson."

"Please, call me John."

Mr. Sparrow reached over to the table, took the mug in trembling fingers, and managed a good sip. "John. Well, I never imagined I'd be on a first name basis with a handsome doctor, but here we are. It's never too late, I suppose."

Laughter huffed out through John's nose.

In the hall outside, Mrs. Clarke's visitors called out their goodbyes. The toddler, wide-eyed as her mother carried her past the doorway, burbled nonsense and stretched her arms toward Mr. Sparrow. Mr. Sparrow chuckled and waved.

In the wake of visitor's hours, the hush fell back over the floor like a soft blanket.

"Never was much for children," Mr. Sparrow said. "I never felt like I grew up myself."

"No kids then?"

"No. My sister was the one with children, you know."

John nodded. Mr. Sparrow looked at him with his head cocked, eyes bright and clever like his namesake bird. He'd called John handsome. John settled back in his chair as Mr. Sparrow spoke. Mr. Sparrow was charming. John found he wanted to be charmed.

"She had two children, and I had one grand nephew, wonderful lad. Just full of interesting ideas. He was the last of my family to go," Mr. Sparrow said. He watched the doorway closely for a long moment, as if expecting someone to appear there.

"He was smart, that one. Bold. Different, like me, you know, but never one to despair."

"That's good, isn't it?" John said. His brow furrowed. _Different, like me_.

"If you don't mind me saying, you look like the type that takes things hard sometimes," Mr. Sparrow said.

John nodded, feeling more exposed than he had when Sherlock read him from the stage. Silly emotion crumpled him from the inside. It was true. He took a lot of things hard.

"That's all right John. There's no one way to be in this world."

John forced a smile. "Ah," was all he managed to say, a non word. He'd never made a decision to be one way or the other, only drifted to the next thing, and the next. He wondered if Mr. Sparrow could see that too.

"John, time for lights out."

John jumped at Mary's voice. She leaned against the doorway, studying him as if she'd caught him doing something naughty. She'd said his name so particularly, with an extra lilt to it, almost like she was mocking Mr. Sparrow, or him, for allowing Mr. Sparrow to use his first name.

He had no idea how long she'd been standing there. He'd looked up just a moment before and the doorway had been empty, hadn't it?

He scrambled to compose himself. "Right. Well, let's see about adjusting your meds tomorrow, Mr. Sparrow." He stood, his body falling into military poise.

"All right, Dr. Watson." Mr. Sparrow's eyes were steady as he played along with John's game of formality. "Thank you, and goodnight."

***

Mrs. Clarke began struggling to breathe at six p.m. on Monday. John was examining her when Mary came into the room to announce that the night nurse had called in sick, one of the orderlies had been shifted downstairs, and the other had yet to appear.

"I don't suppose you were planning to leave any time soon?" she asked, dripping sarcasm.

Mrs. Clarke was semi-conscious. She could probably hear and understand everything. It would hardly help her to know that one of the staff was finding her impending death inconvenient. He would have a sharp word with Mary as soon as he could. He looked forward to it.

He pressed his stethoscope to Mrs. Clarke's chest. Her heart beat rapidly. Her breath rattled in a shallow burst, then slowed, and stopped. He counted. Ten seconds went by before she inhaled again, more slowly this time. Her eyes fluttered open, and she seemed to watch him intently before they drifted closed.

"I don't think I should leave," he said, barely glancing at Mary. "You go ahead though. It's fine."

She plucked the stethoscope from his ears and draped it around his neck. He shuddered as her fingers brushed his hairline.

"How are you going to manage, all night, by yourself?"

Mrs. Clarke's face was ashen above the white sheets. "It's no problem."

"She'll probably last until morning," Mary said, glancing at the woman as if she were assessing the likelihood that the milk had spoiled. "My best guess."

There'd been a time when John thought it was ideal to be like Mary: pragmatic, unperturbed. Thank God he'd never managed it. It was ugly.

"I'll stay," he said. "You go home."

She unbuttoned her coat. "No, it's fine. Just—if she's not in pain, come take a break. Come to the front desk with me. Come on."

She held out her hand, but he didn't take it, following her at a distance instead. She smiled at him, walked ahead to the nurse's desk, and went into one of the drawers. She pulled out two of the small paper cups they used to give patients water for taking pills, and a flask.

"Whiskey?" she said, smiling at him. "It's going to be a long night, and everyone's tucked in."

He hadn't had a drink since Saturday night at the bar, more than a week ago. It was tempting, he had to admit. His nerves were raw and his heart felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. When he had time, when he allowed himself to lie down and rest, all he could think about was Sherlock. It would be a huge relief to shut all of that down.

Mrs. Clarke needed him. If he was going to stay, he couldn't start drinking. Besides, he had a feeling—unsubstantiated, but strong—that if he started drinking with Mary, she would somehow find a way to produce much more than a flask's worth of alcohol.

"No," he said. "You go ahead. I mean, you're done for the evening. Not for me, thanks." He coached himself to stop speaking. _No thanks_ was probably clear enough.

Mary shrugged and put the paper cups away. "Your loss."

She went home a few minutes later, warning him that she didn't want to hear any complaining when Mrs. Clarke was still alive in the morning. John pulled Mrs. Clarke's file and picked up the phone so he could ring her daughter.

Mrs. Clarke slipped away without regaining consciousness at four a.m., surrounded by her family. She simply stopped breathing: one moment, John was leaning on the doorframe, watching Mrs. Clarke's daughter stroke her mother's hair. Then it all just stopped.

Five a.m. found him sitting outside on the park bench under the oak, drinking a cup of strong tea from a novelty mug: _World's Best Dad_. He'd found it at the back of the cupboard in the second floor lounge, gathering dust.

Sunrise had already begun, the long fingers of the day moving over the world. The family was up in Mrs. Clarke's room, saying their goodbyes, and waiting for the funeral home to open so they could be called to collect the body.

John was beyond exhausted. Everything was fine, but it was like he was seeing the world from the wrong end of a telescope. His perspective had shifted somehow in the night. He wasn't sure he could place why. It didn't have to do with Mrs. Clarke, not exactly. 

He thought of Mr. Sparrow, tucked safe into his bed, at least until death came for him. Mr. Sparrow didn't seem worried by the prospect of his own end. He was remarkable.

 _Different, like me_.

John scrubbed at his face. A rat ran across the empty parking spaces tucked behind the main hospital building, headed for the bins.

People made their way through life, in their own ways, and didn't always talk about the paths they took.

He'd been thinking about everything all wrong, imagining there had to be this grand process of stepping outside the boundaries, of living outside everything considered good and normal, if he wanted to be serious about a man.

Yes, he would need to make adjustments, and he still didn't know if he had a place in Sherlock's world, that glitter-fuelled experimental art exhibit where murder was a matter of course, and everything was dark edges and scintillating light and promise. But this, being different, and knowing it, well, people managed that all the time, didn't they? Mr. Sparrow did it, somehow. John could do it too. He'd been doing it all along. 

He'd always liked men and women. It was easy for him to hide the men, the way he went about it, never letting any of them get close, never allowing himself to fall in love. He'd been hiding in plain sight his whole life, and because it kept him safe, he'd thought it would always be that way.

The early morning breeze rustled through the leaves of the oak, making the shadows dance.

He'd never thought of himself as an impulsive person, but he'd been running on pure instinct last weekend, running toward that shining life as if he'd always been looking for it. And then, like the idiot he was, running away from it just as hard. There was more to it, of course. It was complicated, and he had been thrown by how Sunday had ended. Still, he hadn't exactly waited around to ask questions, had he?

It all meant something. He didn't know what. He drank down the rest of his tea in one go. A warm feeling moved through his low belly as he thought of Sherlock, wondered what he was doing right now, imagined him sleeping, curled into some improbable position on the sofa in the corner of the bar. He wondered wildly if Sherlock had broken into his bedsit again, and was at this moment lying in John's bed, dreaming of something incredible, or worse yet, sunk in nightmares and counting on John to arrive home and soothe him. 

"John," a man said from behind him.

The voice was wrong, and it couldn't be, but hope fluttered in his chest for just a moment that it was Sherlock, somehow come to find him at work and end his indecision.

Nash closed the space between them, sat down beside John, and crossed his ankle over his knee, sprawling, arms across the back of the bench. Larger men—most men—always seemed to want to remind John that he took up so little space. The world spread out to fill the gaps he left.

"Morning," Nash said. "You look like you've been through the wars."

Last night was not his war at all. It was Mrs. Clarke's. He couldn't begin to explain that to Nash, though, so he settled for a nod. "Palliative is more involved than I would have thought."

Nash laughed. "Yes, well. Based on my experience that's true, but not because of the patients." He grinned in the general direction of the long term care building.

Mary crossed the stretch of pavement between the door and the park bench, looking carefully from side to side. He hadn't expected to see her for hours, not until her shift started. She wasn't in uniform. Instead she wore a jean skirt and a red blouse, her hair in loose waves around her face.

It was the funniest thing, John thought. If he didn't know she was a nurse, he would think she was checking the areas around her for enemy soldiers. Her careful movements looked methodical, almost like the close combat techniques he'd been taught, but more fluid, as if she were made for stealth.

Mary moved like she'd been trained to fight. It couldn't have been more clear to him if she'd been holding a gun. What army in the world had trained Nurse Mary Morstan?

"She's a killer, that one," Nash said.

John jolted. "Oh?"

"She'll break you in two and then she'll break your heart, Johnny."

Mary smiled, blinking slowly at John as she approached, hips loose as she walked, her gait changing to something more predatory than combat-oriented.

John shook his head. He was no Sherlock Holmes, able to deduce people at a glance. He was beyond tired, probably hallucinating. Mary was a barracuda, not a ninja.

"Doctor Nash," Mary said. "What are you doing out here?"

"Just off a shift in A&E," Nash said, standing and stretching, arms wide, chest expanded. "Amazing night. We had a whole group of kids—you know, these poufs who dress like girls, all glitter and makeup. They had a bad batch of pills, it seems. Sick as dogs."

John shifted uncomfortably. "They all okay?"

Nash studied him, the unspoken question— _why should you care?_ —all over his face. "Yes," he said. "They're young, not a one of them over eighteen, will bounce back in no time. They'll have some explaining to do when their parents come collect them, but they'll be fine."

John tried to sip tea, then remembered that his mug was empty. If the kids were all younger, then none of them was Sherlock. He felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. Sherlock was probably fine, but he also wasn't at Barts, tucked into some cot in A&E, waiting for John to visit.

"You done for the night?" Nash asked Mary.

"On today," Mary said. "Just came in early to check on you, John. Are you planning on breakfast anytime soon?"

Nash gaped, looking at John, then at Mary, then back at John. Like all of Mary's signals, this one couldn't be more clear. If John answered in a particular way, asked her what her plans were, it would probably be a fairly direct trajectory from this park bench, to a shared meal, to Mary's bed, all said and done before they had to come back in a few hours for their shift.

"I'll sort myself out," John said. "Thank you, though."

Mary's smile turned into something sour for the briefest moment. "Very well. I'll see you in a bit, then."

She sauntered away from them, her purse tucked over her arm. A faint scent of perfume—something sweet and floral—trailed behind her.

Nash leaned over and struck John on the knee. "Mate, are you really not going to follow that lead?"

John looked up at him, eyebrows raised.

He didn't want anything to do with her. He could read the whole future of John and Mary in her smiles, her jokes. She would make it easy. He would get bored. There would be anger, recriminations. Or not. Maybe instead it would be a facile parting: easy come, easy go.

No. He'd tried that road before. He knew what he wanted and it wasn't that.

 _Saving myself for him_ , he thought. _How quaint_. Maybe it was quaint. Maybe it was a dead end. Maybe he didn't care.

"Bit too obvious for me," John told Nash. "But if you want, go ahead."

Nash laughed. "I don't think she's interested."

John shrugged. "I know I'm not."

***

John allowed himself to drift through the next couple of days, taking short sleeps in the on-call room and spending as much time as he could with the patients. When Dr. Biddle called, John talked him out of coming in.

The truth was, he wanted the routine of the ward, so he could have some time to think. He was coming to a point of decision.

He couldn't stand the idea of slipping back into his dull, solitary life, or worse yet, another relationship he didn't truly want. At the same time, going forward meant risking everything. His idea of who he was. The way he dealt with his personal life. His heart.

Slowly, a new perspective was coming in. He could feel it, but it needed time to develop. He needed time.

He focused on the details of managing his patients' bodies. He took notes on how much they ate, how much they excreted, the quality of their pain, the drugs he administered, the ones he knew to avoid, the ones he wished he could give more of, the signs that life was ending, the signs that it would continue for a while longer. In that way, he got through without thinking too much about Sherlock.

Occasionally, Sherlock burst through anyway: an image of him onstage, crawling, lewd and shameless, howling; or looming over him in the Great Ormond Street Hospital basement, the heat of his lithe body suffusing John with need.

He avoided sleep until he was wavering on his feet and he couldn't think any more. When he did lie down, less happy thoughts crept in.

Did Sherlock's older lover ever see his left upper arm, trace the circle of that tattoo, ask what it meant?

Did Sherlock answer? Did he tell the truth? Had he told the truth to John?

When those thoughts ran down, he was left with simple facts. He needed to see Sherlock again. He wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he left things where they were. He would settle for being friends, if it came down to that.

( _God, no_ , his heart replied: _please more, more please_.)

***

On Wednesday, in the afternoon before his final shift, Mary cornered him at the nurse's station with a mug of coffee. For the sake of politeness, he accepted it. She hadn't pushed for any kind of personal interaction since Monday, hadn't flirted at all. Besides, he was in a good mood. He had a three day break coming up, and he'd begun to wonder what he might do with that time. Anticipation had begun to stir something in him. He could manage a few minutes' chat with Mary.

He'd just started to enjoy a conversation about the weather (the most innocuous topic), when Mary leaned forward to brush her fingers against his upper arm.

"Oh," she said, her voice full of pity.

His scar. "That's nothing." He shifted away from her touch.

She frowned. "It doesn't look like nothing." She grasped his elbow and pushed up the edge of his short sleeve.

He moved away, pulling the sleeve down. "It's just something I did when I was a kid. Really, nothing big."

The scar was clearly something, and clearly more recent than childhood. Parts of it were still angry and red. It would take years, probably, for the colour to fade. No one would think it was nothing.

Mary had run her hand up high enough to feel that the scar got heavier and broader above where it poked out of his sleeve. Under the thickened red tissue, the bumps of shrapnel were quite obvious lumps under his skin.

She watched his face carefully. They both knew he'd lied.

He smiled. He couldn't have explained why, but the lie felt wonderful.

Without another word, she stood up from her chair, left the nurse's station, and moved away down the hall, her hips swaying, looking like nothing so much as an angry cat.

***

In the early evening, John popped into Mr. Sparrow's room to find him awake and alert, standing at his window, watching the gnarled oak tree sway in the wind outside. The sky was not just overcast, but dark and brooding, gearing up for a storm.

"You all right?" John asked him.

"Oh fine, John, fine." Mr. Sparrow beamed.

He looked very well, good colour in his cheeks, his movements much more spry than they had been.

John fought back a wave of concern. He was well aware that many patients experienced a surge in energy levels before the final crash into death. However, Mr. Sparrow's most recent blood tests had shown marginally improved pancreatic and kidney function. Could it be he was really getting better? It was unlikely he would improve much, but John found himself hoping anyway.

"Tea?" John asked. It had become their routine. John had taken over Mary's role, bringing a cup to Mr. Sparrow every day, and sitting with him so they could talk for a while.

Mr. Sparrow grinned, and said the same thing he always said. "Oh, I couldn't trouble a handsome doctor to do anything so mundane."

"I could do with one myself, and some company."

"Well then. I can hardly refuse."

When John returned to the room, two mugs in hand, Mr. Sparrow stood at his bedside table. The metal drawer was open, and he was busy shuffling through papers. He pulled out a spiral notebook with trembling hands, made a noise of satisfaction, and started on the long trek over to the vinyl chair in the corner.

Once he was seated, and had taken a long pull on his tea, he opened the notebook and began to flip through it.

"I wanted to show you something, John." He turned through a few more pages. "Here, yes."

He pulled out a photograph, the edges worn with age, about four inches tall, three inches across. John took it from him.

"That was taken on a Thornton-Pickard camera in 1905. A friend of mine was a photographer. He was so proud of that camera."

The sepia-toned photo showed two young men standing in an open field. Trees ranged behind them. In the background, two dark-coloured horses cropped at long grass. The men were laughing, smiles broad. They wore riding gear, and had their arms looped around each others' waists. One of them, with thick dark hair falling down over his forehead, bore some resemblance to Mr. Sparrow. The other, with neatly combed ginger or light brown hair, turned to look at the first man, eyes adoring him.

John smiled. "Who?"

"Well you wouldn't know it, but that's me on the left," Mr. Sparrow said.

"I thought so. It looks like you."

"You flatter me, my boy. That other fine young man is Leonard. Leo. My Leo." He smiled at John's inquiring look, all mischief. "That's right, Lee and Leo. Like we were made for each other. We were, I believe. We were twenty-five years old when that was taken. So young, and so happy. We were always happy together."

John stared soberly at the photo. They looked like any young couple in love. He swallowed against the tightness in his throat. There were obstacles to any romance, weren't there? In the beginning, there were always things to be sorted. Negotiations, compromises.

"What happened to him?"

Mr. Sparrow sighed. "He passed fifteen years ago. Stroke. No one saw it coming. I found him lying at the top of the stairs."

"I'm sorry," John said. He meant it. His time in palliative care had shifted him, changed the way he thought. Eventually, everything got stripped away. It was sad and terrible, but there was a sweetness to it all as well.

"We had a good run," Mr. Sparrow said.

"Still, it must have been hard on you," John said. "You must have had to hide a lot of the time."

Mr. Sparrow laughed, his eyes bright again. "You're a fine lad for a doctor, you know that?"

John shook his head. Mr. Sparrow always made him smile, and more often than not, managed to make him blush a bit, too.

"We did hide," Mr. Sparrow continued, "but not always. When I was a boy, just coming into my own, you know, there was that Oscar Wilde business. That changed everything. There was never a time like it, inverts on every street corner, shouting at the police, and flaunting it every way they could. I suppose you could say, before the trials, anyway, that it was much like things are now. Times change, and fashions come and go, and there will always be room for those who are different, if they are smart about it."

John thought about the bar, about the way Sherlock had made a home for himself. Even out on the street, he commanded a kind of respect. People seemed to know he was exceptional, to flow around him, to make room for him. Times were changing, and God how he wanted to be a part of it, how he craved that change for himself. If Mr. Sparrow could manage, why couldn't he?

In the photo, young Mr. Sparrow grinned, as if daring him to change, daring John to be better, be different.

"You keep that," Mr. Sparrow said, as if sensing John's reluctance to give it back.

"No. I couldn't." John tried to hand the picture back, but Mr. Sparrow waved it away.

"I have others." He patted the spiral notebook. "I want you to have that. Something to remember me by."

John pressed the photo between his palms before tucking it away in his shirt pocket. "Thank you," he said. "Really, thank you very much."  

Mr. Sparrow pulled another photo from between the pages of his notebook. This one was newer, square, and in colour, from a modern camera. It showed a young man dressed in plaid pants and a polo shirt, standing next to Mr. Sparrow.

"My grand-nephew," he said. "That was my 85th birthday."

The younger man was smiling at the camera, his arm around Mr. Sparrow's shoulders. John flipped the picture over. "Alastair and Uncle Frank, 1967," someone had written in faint pencil. John frowned at the name: Frank. He thought to ask about it, but Mr. Sparrow was already speaking, and maybe the answer was private. 

"He's the one I told you about," Mr. Sparrow said. "He died two months after that was taken. It was strange. They said it was suicide, but I would never believe it. He wasn't the type. I never saw him again after that day. It was a closed casket. They said he didn't look right."

John studied the photograph, the grinning younger man with his shock of dark hair, so like the young Mr. Sparrow in the other photograph, and the trusted uncle. Mr. Sparrow's nephew smiled like he didn't have a care in the world. John was sure he'd posed for pictures that had come out just like this one. Sometimes faking a smile was all you could do.

Mr. Sparrow continued, as if determined to convince John that he was right about his nephew. "He'd just met someone. A fellow. And someone he knew as a boy. They'd just run into each other on the street. Had been great friends as children, and there they were, grown men, finding each other again. Quite romantic if you ask me. He was very excited to tell me. Promised me he'd bring his beau round to meet me, on a quieter day." Mr. Sparrow blinked hard. "He felt the others at the pensioner's home wouldn't understand."

John handed the photograph back. "I'm sorry you lost him."

Mr. Sparrow nodded. He wore a look of concentration, as if he hadn't said everything he wanted to say, and he was trying to remember, or find the right words.  

When he raised his head, the cloud had passed. His eyes were bright again. "Do you have anyone?" His trembling mouth pressed into a wry smile. "Anyone special?"

John cleared his throat. He couldn't help but smile in return. He imagined some future time, when everything was right, bringing Sherlock to meet Mr. Sparrow. The words gushed out before he could stop them. He didn't want to stop them. "Well, I met someone recently. No telling where it might go, but—"

"Ah!" Mr. Sparrow said. "Everywhere, my boy. Simply everywhere. Who could resist a handsome doctor like you?"

Mary chose that precise moment to walk past Mr. Sparrow's doorway. Her head whipped around as she took in the view of John sitting in his chair, leaning in toward the older man. He hadn't heard her coming. He wondered if she'd been standing outside the door, listening to the entire exchange. She winked at him and continued on, down the hall.

Mr. Sparrow leaned forward and put his hand on John's knee. "Maybe best not to say any more. I've seen the way that one's been looking at you. I don't think you'd like her if she got jealous."

***

John was taking the tea mugs back to the staff lounge to wash them when Mary sidled up to him.

"I think that old pouf has a crush on you," she teased.

If she was looking for denial, for some macho demonstration of his heterosexuality, she would be disappointed.

"Really?" he said, as chipper as he could be. "I should be so lucky. Mr. Sparrow is amazing."

He was growing to enjoy the sour faces Mary made, to think of them as little points on a score card.

Later, when he went to the shower, he took the photo of Mr. Sparrow and his Leo from the chest pocket of his scrubs, and carefully transferred it into his wallet, making sure it wouldn't be bent or creased.  He would find a frame for it, he promised himself, the first chance he got.

***

Thursday morning saw the end of his last night shift. At dawn, he took his cup of weak instant coffee outside, to sit under the oak tree in the neglected courtyard one last time. All that was left was to sign off on some paperwork, and go home.

He was exhausted, but, more important than that, he felt entirely optimistic.

It was high time he took care of himself. High time he went home, slept in his own bed, and did something about his life.

He was just beginning to imagine what that might be, and how fixing the mess he'd made with Sherlock might enter into it, when Molly Hooper walked across the asphalt toward the tiny patch of grass, a folder tucked under her arm, and a paper coffee cup in each hand.

"Hello, John." She handed him one of the cups. "I thought you might like a real coffee for a change."

"Cheers," he said, taking a sip. It was delicious and strong, next to the dishwater he'd been drinking.

He felt his spirits lift. He had no doubt Molly was here as messenger, rather than by her own volition. Maybe all was forgiven, or there was nothing much to forgive. He hoped so.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

She shrugged, and sat on the bench next to him. "Sherlock wanted to know if you would look at these reports. Something happened last night, a very strange—well, you'll see. He'd like a second—he'd like your opinion."

John looked over Molly's shoulder at the main hospital building, half expecting to see Sherlock wandering over in some outlandishly stylish gear.

"Oh he's not—he's not here. He's not back in town yet. Sorry," she said. "I thought you knew."

John blinked. He wasn't sure how much information he should ask for. "Ah," he said.

"I know, no show last weekend? He was livid to be called out of town for a whole week. But he insisted that I write up these reports and get them to you. He telephoned, just now. Told me where you'd be, so I assumed—" She closed her mouth, pursed her lips. "Well, I thought you'd spoken to him as well."

John wasn't sure what to think. "Does that happen often? Sherlock going out of town?"

"Every once in a while. Family stuff. He doesn't talk about it much directly. He just sort of rants obliquely in between beating corpses with riding crops and testing the decomposition rate of salivary glands."

Easier to just look at the reports than to ask after riding crops and corpses, John thought, his mind reeling. _Family stuff_. Could that be true, or was it just something that Sherlock told people when he was busy with older men?

 _Family stuff_. He tried to remember the man in the three-piece suit: the posh accent, the way Sherlock had called him an intrusion, asked John to wait for him. Based on his memory, he couldn't really see a family resemblance, but if he thought about posture, noses in the air, tone of voice, general antagonism, then didn't it seem a bit more likely that what he thought was a rent boy situation was actually a standoff between siblings?

God, he'd run away.

He could have stayed. He should have listened. He should have waited long enough for an explanation. And Sherlock had been away for the last week, and the last thing he'd seen of John was his back.

"Second opinion," he ended up saying. "Whose is the first?"

"Mine." Molly handed him the file.

It took him a few long moments of shuffling through the photos and reading the police report before he began to understand. _Very strange_ , Molly had said. _Completely bizarre_ might cover it better. The Met had fished the car, a Morris Marina (ironic), from the Thames the day before. Visible in the first few photos were a collection of pale limbs pressed up against the car's windows from the inside.

The later photos showed six corpses, pulled from the car and laid out, four men, two women, ages various. Totally naked.

John frowned. "They were all in there?"

"Yes." She pressed her lips closed and looked, briefly, as if she were suppressing a giggle.

"Tight fit." John tried not to laugh. It was too surreal. "Let me see if I understand. These six, they stole this car, had an orgy in it, and drove it into the Thames?"

"The Met can't tell if it was intentional or not," Molly said. "The driving into the Thames part, not the orgy."

John shook his head. "Who in their right minds would—" He cut himself off. If Sherlock wanted him to look at this, it was probably related to everything he'd told John the last time they were together.

As crimes went, this one was even more elaborate than the apparent suicides from before.  This wasn't some gruesome moment of violence, like the homemade bomb, or a small series of gestures toward an end, like the fabric softener suicide. It was riotous, chaotic, a bacchanalia. Wasn't that the kind of thing you could expect from James Moriarty? Something so weird, it would stand out? Something to really grab Sherlock's attention?

"Were they drunk?" He flipped to Molly's path report and scanned it again.

"Some of them had been drinking, yes, but nothing excessive." She pointed to the page containing the details. Two of the men had two or three drinks' worth of alcohol in their systems. "The driver was sober, apparently," Molly added.

"No drugs."

"None whatsoever, unless they took something my tests can't identify. It looks like they were having the time of their lives, up until the moment they drowned."

John turned to additional photos Molly had included at the back of the file. These showed close-ups of each of the bodies in turn, more detailed images of their faces and torsos. One showed a raw circular cut on the palm of one upturned hand. John's stomach dropped.

"What did you make of this?" He showed Molly the photo. He wouldn't give anything away, but he wanted to know if there were other marks, on the other bodies.

"Very recent," Molly said. "And unlike anything else about this case, definitely deliberate. Police found a utility knife in the glove compartment. One of the women had a circle cut in her hip. That wound was a little older, though. I'd say it was made at least three days ago."

John shuffled through the additional photos. There, on the low belly of one of the men, was a faint circular scar. Similar marks were visible on the others: old and faded, evidence of ancient burns or cuts, on a knee, a chest.

Molly leaned in as he looked at the final photo, a close-up of an old circular scar on the bottom of a male victim's foot. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"Dunno." He'd promised not to say anything. He could at least honour that, even if he'd been inclined to question everything else Sherlock had told him.

She eyed him carefully. "Greg thinks Sherlock knows more than he's said."

John smiled. "You should ask him about it. Sometime."

Her face broke into a lopsided grin as she recognized her own advice to John. "I suppose."

"He hasn't seen any of this yet?"

"No. Like I said, he hasn't been in town. He heard about it right after it happened. He called me to come in last night so I could work on it. He's only had a few of the details. Much more efficient for him to look at the file himself, rather than try to describe all that to him over the phone."

"When are you going to show it to him?"

"Normally I would wait until he came into the lab, but he isn't getting back to town until later today, and he's going straight to the bar. I might wait and see if he wants to meet after tomorrow's show, but I've got a date."

"Oh. Is it—"

"Greg, yes." She barely suppressed a smile. "Sherlock will be at the bar around three this afternoon? He's got rehearsal, of sorts. But I have work until five, and I'm not sure I'll be up for much immediately after. I'll need to sleep."

"Wait, you haven't started work yet?"

"Just about to," she said. "I was up all night with that, so. Would you mind taking that to him? I think he should see it as soon as possible. He seems a bit bothered by this case. Like he's taking it more personally than usual. I mean, he always takes things personally. I've seen him tell people off for thinking too loudly."

John giggled. He could imagine it.

"This seems more intense than usual," she said. "I think he'd appreciate it. If you wouldn't mind, that is."

He held the file in his hand, rubbing his thumb across the stiff paper folder. If Moriarty had made another move in his game, John needed to make sure that Sherlock was okay. But that wasn't the only reason to see him. The past ten days had changed John. He wanted to try that change on for size, see where it led him.

"I don't mind at all."

Molly thanked him and left to start her shift.

John looked up at the oak tree, at the brightening sky. He couldn't sit any longer. He stood up and paced, walked the green lawn between the bench and the tree. He had one last chance to think this through. 

He'd known Sherlock for a weekend. Not nearly long enough to ask that he change who he was, or how he managed his life. John had been surprised, and he'd acted badly, and he'd made assumptions.

He touched the rough bark of the oak, found a patch where it had fallen away, where the tree's trunk was worn smooth by time or hardship, and he leaned into it, pressing his hand against it. His chest hurt again; his stomach soured. Not a panic attack this time: this was something much more dangerous. He didn't dare name it.

Whatever the facts of Sherlock's life, he would move past them. Brother, patron, boss, lover—whatever that man was, John would find out, and he would deal with the answer.

Toadstools sprouted by one of the park bench's legs, brown and inconspicuous. He smiled at them. Everything had a right to be as it was. It wasn't for him to say.

They'd been so close. What a fool he was. Of course he would give in, accommodate, allow. For more time with Sherlock, he would pay in time spent and attention and understanding and yes, even jealousy. He would let go of ego and work on himself and change and be better. He would take the bad with the good.

He looked up at the sky through the glossy dark green of the oak's leaves. It was going to be a beautiful day.

John stretched, gathered the paper cups, and walked back toward long term care. He would check in one last time on Mr. Sparrow and the others, and make sure everyone was stable. Mary had come in early. For once he was glad. She could cover the floor for the next couple of hours, until Dr. Biddle came in at eight.

He would go, get his jacket, and take himself home. Hopefully he would get a good sleep in before it was time to go to the bar. He wanted to look like something other than twenty miles of bad road for Sherlock.

He took the stairs up to the floor two at a time, and burst through the double doors, ready to finish, ready to call himself done with palliative care, at least until Sunday.

The sound of hushed conversation greeted him from down the hall. A small crowd of orderlies clustered a few doors down from the nurse's station.

John blinked as he watched them push a stretcher into Mr. Sparrow's room.

Mary was at his elbow, popping out of nowhere like a cartoon devil. Her hand squeezed his upper arm. "John," she said.

"What happened?" He already knew the answer. He knew it with every nerve, every cell.

She whispered in his ear. "It's Mr. Sparrow. He's passed."

She had quite a grip on him. Getting away would involve some wrestling. John forced himself to hold still.

"He went fast," she said, her mouth too close to his ear. "That's how it goes sometimes. You get used to it."

Did she intend to soothe? He didn't think so.

Her voice pinned him to the spot. "There's nothing you could have done, John."

The hallway appeared to stretch away from him. His feet were glued to the spot, his entire body held down by Mary's grip on his arm, and strange inertia. The orderlies wheeled the stretcher out, a small body, almost child-sized, beneath a white sheet.

"He was improving," John said, not to Mary, but to the empty air, to himself.

"Believe me, the sooner you understand this could happen any time, to any of them, to anyone, really, the better."

He turned on her, ready to argue, but her look stopped his mouth. She expected a fight. Her whole body stood at the ready, her face grim and eager. He looked down at her free hand. She held a sharpened pencil in her fist, her thumb positioned on the eraser. Ready for jabbing. The smallest trace of a smile moved over her lips. She released her grip on his arm.

He turned away from her. The threat was there. Of that he had no doubt. It sang in his blood, urging him to move, to get away, or to stand and fight. It was enough to propel him forward, the longest walk, toward the body of his dear friend at the end of the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Changes," maybe the most famous David Bowie song. When I was becoming aware of pop music as a teenager, this is the one song from Bowie's '70s discography that still got regular radio play--this and "Space Oddity," I suppose. You can listen [here](https://youtu.be/pl3vxEudif8), I think? I still haven't found my speakers yet. If it is what it says on the tin, this is the song.


	5. Chapter 5

 

* * *

 

**Tell Me That It's Real**

_'Cause I'd rather stay here,_  
_With all the madmen_  
_Than perish with the sad men roaming free_

 _And I'd rather play here_  
_With all the madmen_  
_For I'm quite content they're all as sane as me_

 

John pressed forward, down the hallway that muffled all sound. The soft murmurs of the orderlies, the squeak of the stretcher wheel, the rustle of the sheet as hands tugged it more firmly over Mr. Sparrow's face, all seemed muted, as if John were hearing everything from a great distance, or through layers of cotton.

Mr. Sparrow's body barely filled half the area of the stretcher. He was a small, neat man. Tidy in his manners but sharp, bright.

He'd taken one look at John and known him for what he was.

"Someone has got to examine him," he said to the empty air. Mary had stayed behind at the nurse's station, thank God for small miracles. John drifted more than walked, his legs unsteady.

He pushed in among the orderlies, until the stretcher bumped against his hip. He rested his hands beside the body.

"Someone has to declare him," he said to himself, too loudly. The orderly standing closest to him startled at the sound of his voice.   

"Someone has," a male voice said. "I assure you, he's quite dead."

Nash stood by the bed in Mr. Sparrow's room. John's anger flared at the sight of him. "What are you doing here?"

Nash wiped his mouth with his fingertips. His white lab coat hung open. His hair was mussed. "Well, you stepped out, John. Nurse Morstan called me in. Good thing, since Mr. Sparrow seemed to have been ready to go any moment. You've been getting quite the reputation for the personal touch here, if you're not aware. I'm surprised you would have left him."

John's fist clenched at his side. He could punch that smug look off Nash's face, that sleepy self-satisfaction, totally inappropriate for a sick room, much less for the scene of a good man's death.

That look. John's eyes moved down, to the easy set of Nash's shoulders. A trace of red lipstick smudged his white collar.

Nash hadn't been here because of Mr. Sparrow at all. He'd been here for Mary.

"All right," John said. It wasn't.

The orderlies had already wheeled the stretcher down the hall to the service elevator. It was over, and John hadn't had the chance to say goodbye.

He wanted to be alone, just take a minute. It was the decent thing to do. Mr. Sparrow was his friend, after all.

"What happened?" he asked instead.

"He died." Nash spread his hands as if everything else were completely self-evident.

"Cause?"

"Age." Nash's tone was brusque, his laugh a harsh bark. "Honestly. You know the history. In the end it looked like a stroke or aneurysm. He wasn't in bed, if that makes a difference. We found him collapsed on the floor. He probably didn't know what hit him."

Sorrow rolled through John as he forced himself to listen. He should have been here. He might have been able to do something.

"He had a good run, from what Mary says. Bit of a wild one in his youth, yeah? She says you got to know him quite well." Nash leered, his voice heavy with amusement and implication.

John shook his head. So Mary was going for public humiliation now, in addition to having a bit of fun during her shift, while she was supposed to be watching the patients. Where had they even had a chance to do it? In the closet behind the nurse's station? In one of the empty patient rooms? They would have had to leave the floor to go to an empty on call room. The closest one was full of John's stuff: a small pile of dirty laundry; the rumpled blankets and sheets he'd been using; a collection of incomplete paperwork; empty coffee cups.

John stumbled back out into the hallway. The orderlies were already long gone. They'd taken Mr. Sparrow away.

"Go home, John," Nash called after him.

Mary leaned against the counter at the nurse's station. She had Molly's folder open, and was leafing through it. John must have left it there. He looked down at his hands. Yes, they were empty. God. No. She had no right. They had no right.

"This is wild stuff," she said. "What are you doing with this?"

The top two buttons of her uniform were undone, the shirt pulled to one side, revealing too much of the top of one breast, the edge of her bright red bra.

He grabbed the folder from her hands, ignoring her indignant expression, and tucked it under his arm. His face was burning, hot with anger and shame and a sick sense that all knowledge should be kept from her, at whatever cost. 

"So that's it? He just goes downstairs?" He was furious, his voice tight with rage, squeezed into a single red hot point. "We have to notify someone."

"I checked, John. There's no one."

"I can't believe that. Not him. He was a good man. There must be someone."

Mary shook her head. "This is the job. We have to let go and clear them through so someone else can have the room. The sooner you learn that, the better."

John imagined wildly that Mary would hold that soft, even tone no matter what. She could put a pillow over your face and still murmur at you sweetly. Death and saccharine.

She sat down at the desk behind the counter, took up a pen, and began marking a patient chart. "On your way home then?" The question was bland; her tone was bland.

"Yeah," he said. He would go there eventually.

She looked up at him, all neat efficiency. "Will that be all? I'd really like to finish up with this before Dr. Biddle comes in." She made a stabbing motion at the form with her pen.

The clock above the desk read seven fifteen. Mary didn't say a word as John bashed the door to the stairwell open.

Mr. Sparrow's body was only getting further away. They would take him to the mortuary in the main hospital building. John thundered down the stairs with a purpose. He had to get there, get someone to listen, to pay attention. No one would want to hear about the possibility of foul play. They would think he was mad. No one would accept the possibility that someone had killed an old man, not one who was already dying.

John made it through the door outside, and stumbled over to the park bench. The sky seemed too bright, too open, the noise of the ventilation units too harsh.

He lost all steam, and had to stand under the oak tree, bent over, hands resting on his knees. His stomach roiled. He waited the nausea out. The entire time he'd been down here talking with Molly, Mr. Sparrow was dying. He didn't know. How didn't he know? There should have been a feeling, a sign.

He rubbed his face with both hands, and scrubbed his scalp with his fingers. He was getting a headache. He needed to go home, and sleep, then figure out his next steps.

He headed for the basement of the main building.

He knew the procedure. Hospital administration would try to determine if there were any funeral plans. If there weren't, the body would be sent to a local funeral home for a cremation and pauper's burial. It would all happen quickly. The coroner might have a look to confirm cause of death, but in this case, the paperwork was complete and there was almost no chance Nash's word would be questioned. Mr. Sparrow's body would be gone by end of day.

He needed sleep. He needed time.

He needed Sherlock. God, he knew he couldn't count on him for pity or sympathy, or he shouldn't. They barely knew each other. But still, Sherlock had talked and John had listened, and every nerve in John's body ached. He clutched the folder, bending the cardboard. Right. He had plans to see Sherlock later today. He had business with him. Good. It would make it easier to talk to him about all of this. About everything.

The doors of the mortuary were locked. John paced. The air was cold, smelling of damp and bleach. He wondered what Sherlock would do.

Sherlock would have a key. Sherlock had all the keys, didn't he? He would know somebody who could help.

John looked at the folder in his hand. He knew somebody. Not well, but he wondered if he could ask Molly anyway. He flipped to the path report, to the lab extension number. There was a phone on the wall down the hall. He picked up the receiver and dialed, twisting the fraying cord in his fingers.

Molly answered on the fifth ring. She sounded out of breath. "Pathology."

"Molly? It's John."

"Oh, John. Is something wrong? You're not at the—no, I just saw you a while ago, didn't I? Are you home?"

"No, I'm downstairs. Listen Molly, I'm probably overstepping, but I wonder if you would do me a favour."

"If I can."

"There's a body here, just sent here from long term care. His name is—was—Lee Sparrow. He's died just now, and there's no one here to talk to, but I need—I need them to not move him yet."

A long silence issued from the other end of the line. "Autopsy then? Full report?"

John paced the hall as far as the phone cord allowed. "I don't know. I just need the process slowed. I need to keep them from sending him out. It's too fast and I don't have time."

"I understand," Molly said. "It's police business then."

"No," John said. "I just need to make plans for him. With him. About him. God, I'm so tired. I'm sorry."

"No problem," she said. "Police business. I believe Detective Inspector Lestrade already sent an order over." There was the sound of paper shuffling in the background. "Ah yes. Right here. For Lee Sparrow, you said? That's right."

John closed his eyes. He swayed on his feet. "Thank you." His voice was husky. He hadn't cried, wouldn't. Not yet. "How long can you hold him?"

"Twenty four hours? Forty-eight if necessary. Longer than that and I'll need different forms than I have."

"Okay. Just let me go home, and think for a bit. I'll get back to you. Is that all right?"

"Are _you_ all right?"

"I don't know." John sighed. He didn't know what else to say. "I'm going to go get some sleep. Thank you."

He hung up the phone and stared at it for a long while before he moved.

*** 

John woke up at two in the afternoon in his own bed, trapped in the flimsy sheet he'd pulled over himself. He'd rolled while he slept. His first thought was of Mr. Sparrow's body on the stretcher, the sheet pulled up over his face.

He hadn't even been able to see him one last time.

He sat up and put his face in his hands. He was still wearing his lab coat, scrubs and shoes. He'd made the whole trip home in his hospital clothes, clutching Molly's file folder as if his life depended on it. He'd left his green jacket in the locker at the hospital, his street clothes in the on call room. His life was scattered across too many locations.

He got ready to go to the bar: showered, shaved, dressed. He was numb, his movements automatic, his mind caught in a dull loop, full of vague ideas of the things he would say. He put the kettle on and drank a cup of tea, then another. There was nothing but ancient takeaway in the fridge. The apples he'd bought last week had gone soft and wrinkled. A lone box of crackers occupied the shelf he thought of as a kind of pantry. He washed a few down with more tea. It wasn't exactly a meal, but it would have to do.

By the time he'd taken the tube and walked the few blocks to the bar, he was more in his body, more awake, but on edge. He grimaced as he put his hand on the rusted pull bar of the dusty black front door.

He thought of Mr. Sparrow's bright, sharp eyes. _Do you have anyone? Anyone special?_

_God, I want to._

Sunlight streaked in through the windows of the bar, illuminating the faded paint on the floor. Soft music played from the jukebox, an old tune. Billie Holiday.

 _You go to my head_  
_And you linger like a haunting refrain_  
_And I find you spinning round in my brain_  
_Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne._

The bartender, Davy, was wiping down glasses. He'd lined them up on the bar top. They glistened in the stream of light that came in through the door as it swung shut behind John. 

"Sorry," Davy said. "We're not quite open yet."

Sherlock stood on the stage with two women: one dark-haired, wearing a man's suit tailored to her figure, and a redhead in a dancer's leotard and wrap skirt. They conferred in close quarters, heads bent together.

John took a step forward, clutching the folder too tightly in his hand, bending it. "Ah. I'm not looking to buy a drink actually—I'm a friend of—"

"He'll stay," Sherlock called from the stage.

John waved, but Sherlock had already turned back to speak to the two women again, head down, nodding as the brunette spoke in amused tones. John couldn't catch what she was saying. She smiled at Sherlock, then reached out and touched the other woman's waist, explaining something.

John took a chair down from one of the tables, and sat. He placed the file folder in front of him and leaned forward, hands clasped, as he watched.

The brunette walked over to the jukebox and restarted the song.

Sherlock took a step back, and watched as the redhaired woman ran through a series of dance movements, swinging her hips and moving across the stage. It was unreasonably sexy, every gesture suggestive. Sherlock's brow furrowed in concentration, head tilted, pale eyes busy. He ran fingers through his hair, which was damp with sweat, curls standing out in all directions. His loose-fitting black t-shirt hung off his right shoulder, hiked up on the left side, showing a hint of hipbone above soft grey cotton trousers. His feet were bare, bony and muscular on the wood floor of the stage.

When the redhead finished, Sherlock took her place and ran through the same movements.

John knew he was staring, but he couldn't help himself. On Sherlock's lanky form, everything looked totally different. Where the woman's movements seemed to be an extension of her curves, Sherlock was athletic, sinewy, tracing the lines of the dance with his arms, making curves and circles where there were none. John couldn't stop watching as Sherlock rehearsed the moves again, sliding and shimmying toward the front of the stage, his lips parted, his eyes lowered, a sheen of sweat decorating his throat.

John had no right to feel so flush with desire, not after the day he'd had, not after way he'd behaved. He put his hand on the file folder, and studied his torn cuticles, the red patches of skin across his knuckles. Doctors wash their hands too often, he thought, as he tried to steady his breathing. It wasn't good for the skin.

The song played again.

 _You go to my head_  
_With a smile that makes my temperature rise_  
_Like a summer with a thousand Julys_  
_You intoxicate my soul with your eyes_

John found himself blinking hard at the folder, at the floor. The song was getting to him. It was too much.

Finally, the music stopped.

Sherlock was glaring at him from the edge of the stage, the look on his face imperious, his eyes raking over John from head to toe, no doubt deducing him. The net effect seemed to scream _who do you think you are_?

Not good then. John fought the urge to swipe at his eyes. No good crying. Maybe he shouldn't have come. Still, he had to, for Molly. Molly had asked him to.

No. For himself. He had to try to make things right. He had to explain. He had to hope.

John smiled faintly as Sherlock returned to the back of the stage, to his place beside the redhaired woman. The two of them moved together, going through a few steps over and over, without the music. 

Sherlock's gaze returned to John, his brows furrowed. He moved his hand—a small motion, dismissive.

John looked at the door. He should leave the folder and go, maybe.

"No," Sherlock said loudly. "Wait there." His expression was still all anger, his movements aggressive.

"You know we talked about balance," the brunette said from her crouched position on the edge of the stage. "We want sexy, not furious. If that energy comes out in the deductions, no one will want to come see you. Except the masochists."

"What's wrong with that?" Sherlock snapped. "You've built your business around them."

John couldn't help laughing to himself. Sherlock in a strop was a thing of beauty. Even, he thought more soberly, if that anger turned on him. 

"Darling," the brunette said. "You think you're a sadist, but you're not. You wouldn't know what to do."

She glanced at John then, and—he was sure he didn't imagine it—winked at him.

Whoever this woman was, she dominated the room, even as Sherlock and the redhead went through more and more provocative displays on the stage. By the time they were done practicing what the brunette described as "better faces," which mostly meant long, smouldering stares, John had almost forgotten why he was here at all.

Finally, the rehearsal was over. Sherlock stepped down from the stage, his hair and t-shirt soaked with sweat. John took a deep breath. Finally they would get to talk. His insides felt rotten. He had no idea what to expect. He could only stand his ground, and say what was on his mind. Apologise. He had to remember to apologise. And then speak the awful truth about what had happened today.

Sherlock moved behind the bar to retrieve a pitcher of water. The two women crossed the floor. John stood, ready to meet them.

"Irene Adler," the brunette told John, extending her hand to him. "You must be John Watson."

Her grip was firm. She tilted her head as she looked at him. "Not very fancy, is he?" She didn't bother introducing the redhead, who giggled and shook her head.

"He must have something, though," Irene continued. "For all the fuss he's caused."

John cleared his throat. He was here for Sherlock, not to be intimidated by complete strangers. "I wasn't aware of any fuss," he said.

Over at the bar, Sherlock took a long drink of water, and refilled his glass, studying the pitcher intently.

"Then you really haven't been paying attention."

Sherlock finally approached. His hair was tousled and damp, cheeks pink with exercise. He looked at the folder on the table, and back to John, then cast his gaze downward.

It had been almost two weeks since they'd spent that afternoon together, and parted so abruptly. (Since John had bolted.) So many things John hadn't had the chance to do or say. He felt them like an injustice, like a tight band around his chest. 

"Best of luck," Irene said, turning to Sherlock and kissing him on the brow.

Sherlock grimaced, and his face grew red.

"Come on, Kate, let's go." Irene tugged on the redhead's hand. "This scene won't play with an audience."

The door closed behind them. The bartender had disappeared. They were alone together, finally.

John had to start somewhere, so he tapped the folder on the table. "Molly sent this. It's—"

"The path report on the corpses. Yes. I called her earlier and spoke to her about her results. So you see, your visit was quite unnecessary. I'll review the photographs later. Thank you." He held out his hand for the folder.

John blinked and took a step back. His hand cramped painfully. He squeezed it into a fist. "I," he began.

Sherlock's brow furrowed. He watched John now from under his lashes, eyes running all over John's body, pausing at his hand, then moving to his groin, and lingering there.

John stood still, military posture. _Fine_ , he thought. _You go ahead. You figure me out. Smartarse._

"You're tired," Sherlock began, his voice high and strained. He leaned on the table, as if he were ready to collapse onto it. "You haven't been home, not since you went in for your first shift, the Monday after we last saw each other." He glanced down at John's clothes. "Except for earlier today. That was the first time."

John sniffed. "Good, yeah. That's a good deduction." He was raw. His nerves were raw.

Sherlock's hand drifted to his left shoulder. He rubbed circles, touching the tattoo through the thin material of his t-shirt. In the downward turn of his mouth and his furrowed brow, John saw the look of a man witnessing some great disaster: shipwreck, earthquake, the obliteration of the sun. Sherlock was worried, John realised. No: defeated.  

Yet he straightened up, tugged the edge of his shirt down, took a deep breath, and carried on, his words falling like a hail of bullets. "Your clothes are clean but not recently laundered, no trace of laundry soap scent on them. You don't have a large wardrobe so you wear and re-wear the same things over and over. If you want to dress up, which you have today, you sometimes have to wash clothes twice a week, but these have been hanging in your closet, neglected. You've been in scrubs for the last ten days. You burned your face with your razor, went with a disposable blade, not electric. You let your beard grow out more than usual. Barely keeping up appearances."

John's lips curved into a smile that felt absolutely hideous, like his face would break. He'd had to smile through worse than this, but it hurt, it hurt. He wanted to collapse under the weight of his grief. He wanted comfort. Instead, he waited. It was all he could do: not walk out, just hold his ground. If he couldn't be patient, he could be quiet, until Sherlock ran out of steam. In the meantime, there was nothing between them but the table and their mutual frustration.

Sherlock shook his head as if trying to clear cobwebs, and inhaled audibly. "You've washed your hair only four—no, five times—in the last week and a half, but daily is your usual routine. You used your regular shampoo today but you have been using something else." He inhaled sharply. "This is something generic, industrial. Nasty. Sleeping at the hospital then. Yes. You slept there." He blinked rapidly, eyes moving lower.

"I did."

John had been a coward. Scared to go home. Scared to face this. The part of him that was ready, that had felt ready, was rapidly failing. He couldn't explain himself. Not when Sherlock was so angry.

"That nurse," Sherlock said, his mouth working like he was chewing on glass. "It was her, wasn't it?"

John flushed with anger at the thought of Mary. "What?"

Sherlock's laugh was full of disdain. He waved his hand at John, dismissive, and began to pace. "Oh there's always a nurse, isn't there? For you, there must have been loads of them. A handsome young doctor in training, one who flirts readily and commits to nothing, has an incipient problem with alcohol and the attendant penchant for grandiose thinking. What nurse wouldn't want you to take her for a tumble? On call room. Handy closet. Anywhere would do, I'd imagine."

John took another step back. It wasn't wrong, not totally. He drank too much, yes, and he flirted a lot, and yes. He committed to nothing. He'd never wanted to, before. He cleared his throat. He'd had a few tumbles in on call rooms. And one very memorable night with a paramedic during his tour of duty, in the back of a supply truck, under a very thick pile of blankets, during the coldest night he could remember. He let it show on his face, that memory. Defiant. He had nothing to hide. No. He was what he was. He wouldn't hold himself back.

Suddenly and disastrously, he found his tongue. "You've thought about that then, have you? All the things that I've done?" The conversation was hideously sidetracked. He knew that, but he couldn't help himself. "And what about you, hm? What have you done? The way you move, the way you are. You think I haven't thought about that? You think I haven't wondered what you get up to, after a show?" He stepped around the table, closer to Sherlock, close enough to catch the scent of his sweat, to see the muscle twitch under his eye. 

Sherlock stood his ground, eyes moving wildly across John's face. "That's what you think about," he said, as if speaking to himself. "That's part of it." His eyes narrowed, his disdain showing in his voice. "I'm sure I'm quite the fun fantasy. Just strange enough, to get you going? To motivate a stay overnight—no, ten—at the hospital?"

"No," John said. "No."

"No? You did stay there. You did sleep—there."

"Yeah, I did, but not for the reason you're saying. No."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed like he was going to spit venom. "You're lying. There was a nurse."

"No," John said. "No. Just wait. There were nurses. Not in that way. Stop it. There are always nurses there but—what nurse, exactly?"

Sherlock waved his hand. "Blonde, a bit grabby, on the hospital premises as much during her off hours as she is when she's working. Penchant for red lipstick."

"You followed me. You must have. There's no other way you could have seen—no. This is too much, Sherlock. Too bloody far."

John was angry about Mary, angry at Mary. It was all coming out at Sherlock, in all the wrong ways.

"Why? Why should it be too far? I don't think it's far enough." Sherlock drew himself up taller as he stared John down.

Haughty, yes. This was the beautiful destroyer John had seen in the alley outside the café, beating down the underemployed baker with the force of his words, before he ever had to use his boots. And this Sherlock was hot too, brutal and gorgeous and beyond, beyond.

John couldn't reply. The conversation was a terrible accident, leaving him whiplashed, more enthralled than he'd ever been, and totally at a loss to find a way out.

Sherlock, it seemed, was just getting started. "You're rethinking all of it, aren't you? Yes, you had fun, playing detective, playing at making new friends. But it was too much. You ran away and started to think for yourself. What conclusions did you reach?"

John was grinning again, contrary to everything he wanted his face to be doing, totally enraged at Sherlock, and at himself. Everything had gone so wrong.

Sherlock ranted, pacing between the bar and John, not looking at him, just moving, hands flying erratically, punctuating his speech. "Any rational man would have nothing to do with me, especially not one who's gone so far as to try to secure a normal life for himself." He turned back to face John. "Look at you, conventional in every way but one." He closed the space between them once more. "It must be terrible, to be so close to everything society prizes, but to have this one flaw, this single fly in the ointment." There was nothing between them now, no room for John to breathe. "You like men, a bit too much. It doesn't square with who you think you are. Who you want to be. How painful for you. What a pity."

Sherlock's eyes were shining, the lower lids pink-rimmed, unshed tears gathering. John couldn't allow him to go on any longer. This was ridiculous, a travesty of the talk he'd desperately wanted to have.

"That's a good guess, Sherlock. A good guess, yeah? Well done. Did you crack it then? The secret part of me? It's hardly a secret, or it shouldn't be. I'm practically wearing it all on my sleeve for you. So take a good hard look, and tell me how you think you did, really." He stuck his chin in the air.

Sherlock blinked, his furrowed brow smoothing into something less like anger, more like concentration. He tilted his head to one side, then the other. "You did sleep at the hospital."

"Yeah." Inappropriate glee crept through John's belly.

"Why? Why would you do that, if not for her?" Sherlock blinked rapidly. "Are you saying you didn't? Why not? It wasn't as if you weren't up for it."

John laughed. Outside, the day had turned dark, the sky heavily overcast. A dull grey light turned the windows of the bar into pale eyes. He didn't have gentle words in him. But he could speak softly.

"Listen, you arse. I don't know what business it is of yours. You don't see me asking questions about you and whoever the hell that was who showed up at your doorstep, but for what it's worth, she's dreadful and I would never, do you hear me, never—" He interrupted himself. "For the record, I wouldn't, not since—" He was breathing hard now. "If you want to know what's happening, you should bloody well just ask."

Sherlock inhaled sharply, mouth open as if to speak. John increased his volume and kept going. He'd spent the last week making up his mind. It was all fine, all of it. He would tell Sherlock that, if it was the last thing he did. He would fight him down to the floor if it meant he could convince him that he was for real.

"I'm here now, and I don't want to be anywhere else and I just—can you just stop for a moment? Just stop and listen?" 

Sherlock hadn't tried to speak. He was blinking hard, watching John, no space between them at all. 

"I don't know what you do, after a show. I don't know what you do with your time, and I don't know who you do it with. I don't have any right to tell you your business. I just—I'm here. I'm here and you can do with that whatever you want." Hot relief burned through him. He'd needed to say this, so badly. "Just Christ, please stop telling me I had anything to do with that monster. And as for _him_ , last time I saw you, whoever he was, I don't care! It doesn't matter to me!" His shout rang out across the empty bar, as he slammed his hand down on the table.

From someplace in the back of the bar came the sound of a door closing. They weren't alone. John fought down the rush of shame and panic that came in.

_Screw panic. Damn shame._

The smallest smile tugged at the corner of Sherlock's lip. "Mycroft."

"What?"

"The spectre at the feast, the ghoul at my door. Mycroft. Is his name." Sherlock placed his hand on the table beside John's, little finger edge brushing John's thumb.

"That's a name?"

"Indeed." Sherlock smirked at the table.

"He's your brother, isn't he?"

"Very good," Sherlock said.

"Yeah. Put that together a bit too late."

A long silence stretched out between them. When Sherlock spoke, his voice was all intrigue and low tones. "Jealousy."

"What?"

"It upset you, seeing him, thinking that I was with someone else, but you're still here. You thought about it, and you rationalised coming back. You experienced jealousy but it didn't stop you. You—"

"Yeah, maybe stop talking."

Sherlock shut his mouth abruptly, but continued to scrutinise John. The conversation had turned. The poison was clearing from the air, the world righting itself, as much as it could.

"You're still upset," Sherlock said.

"Yeah." John laughed, the fight draining out of him.

"No. It's something else." His voice was soft. "What is it? What happened?"

 _Oh_. "A man died."

"Yes?"

"Sherlock, I cocked it all up."

"What do you mean?"

"I called Molly. I asked her to hold the body."

"Why?" There was something new in Sherlock's eyes, something John thought he recognised from before, from the basement of Great Ormond Street Hospital. The look of a dog on a scent.

"I don't—I'm not sure I can explain. I was upset."

"No. Start from the beginning. He died. In your profession I expect that happens. Something must have been unusual about it. Was it your fault?"

John closed his eyes. He felt, on a deep level, that it was. "Maybe. I don't know. It's been a difficult week. He was an old man, not expected to live for much longer, true, but I liked him. He was kind to me."

Mr. Sparrow was so wrapped up in the way John had been able to reframe everything he thought about Sherlock. He didn't know where to begin.

"It was sudden. I thought he had more time, honestly, at least a few weeks more."

Sherlock cocked his head. "So what was it?"

"What was it?"

"What killed him?"

"Well, old age, basically. That's what they said."

"You didn't examine him?"

"No, Nash did. One of my colleagues. A real wanker. Him and—"

"And?"

John smiled ruefully. Somehow in the process of the conversation, he'd shifted from feeling like he was fighting Sherlock. Now they were working together.

"And the nurse. Mary. Nurse Morstan."

"Nurse Mary Morstan." Sherlock said the name like he was trying to plumb the depths of the person, through her name alone. "And they didn't give you a chance to examine the body?" 

"No. Nash signed off on the death certificate, and they sent him off to the mortuary."

"I see," Sherlock said. His face moved through too many expressions for John to track.

"Look, I got sentimental. I got attached. It was a mistake, really, although I can't say I regret it. He was a remarkable man. I'm glad I got to know him."

"What was his name?"

"Mr. Sparrow. Lee Sparrow."

Sherlock stepped back as if he'd been struck, mouth open. "In his nineties? Smallish?"

John felt a peculiar sensation, like he was falling down very fast. "Yes."

"Lee Sparrow is dead?"  

"Yes. Why?"

Sherlock strode to the bar, picked up the receiver on the phone that sat there, and dialed. He watched John while he waited for someone to pick up, his expression calm, bordering on concern. "Molly? You've got a body there that John Watson had you collect. Have you worked on it—him? Have you worked on him yet?"

Sherlock watched John while he listened to Molly speak, and replied in low tones. As he spoke, his gaze softened. For the first time since he'd arrived at the bar, John saw the beautiful bloke he'd come here for. He fought the urge to go to him, to pull him in. He wanted nothing more than to touch him, to hold him, to be held. He'd never sought comfort from another human being, and rarely offered it.

Everything was different now, but too much had been said. Too much remained to be said.

"We'll be there as soon as we can," Sherlock said.

Sherlock placed the phone back in the cradle and turned to John. "I know you've only just come from the hospital, but I think we should go there." He smiled sadly. "I'll tell you one thing. You think you were operating on sentiment, and maybe that's true, but you have an eye for trouble, and you don't shy from it."

***

"What are you thinking?" John asked, breathless.

They walked at top speed from the bar to the underground, John moving at a trot to keep up with Sherlock's long strides.

"We'll meet with Molly in the path lab, then we go to long term care. I need to look at Lee Sparrow's room to confirm some of her results."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. What results?"

"Murder, John. Do you see?"

"I don't."

John was awash with conflicting emotions. Vindication. Sorrow. A background hum of feelings and sensations associated with Sherlock.

"Something made you stop them from sending his body on for burial. _You_ think he was murdered, and you're probably right."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

Pride swelled in John's chest as he fell into Sherlock's walking pace, matching him, step for step. "So why do you think it might be murder?"

"Personal history. Lee Sparrow was a public figure, controversial. He travelled widely, to unusual places. Had some skills not strictly necessary for who and what he was. Needs more research, but in ninety years of life I'm sure he made his fair share of enemies. As murders go, it's brilliant, really: almost no one would think to investigate the death of someone who was already dying. The real question is, who would need Lee Sparrow dead? And why couldn't they just wait?"

The last several days spun through John's mind. So much had happened. More than he'd thought. "You still haven't said how you knew him."

Sherlock tugged John's arm, urging him to continue down the street. "He was a formidable man in his day, at least in certain circles. He opened a Burlesque club in the 1940s with male and female performers. It closed about eight years ago. Some of the acts were notorious, lots of audience participation of dubious kinds. Lee Sparrow launched Irene's career. I knew of him, but I never met him myself, more's the pity."

"It is."

"So believe me John, when I say that I understand completely what it was about him that drew you in. He was a fascinating man. An illusionist."

"A stage magician?"

"Something like that. Again, I've heard stories. People say you never forgot one of his shows."

"But if he was so popular, why didn't he have friends around him? No one was visiting him."

Sherlock shrugged. "Some people are private. When they're ready to go, they arrange to disappear. Or maybe he knew someone was after him, and he didn't want to put anyone else in danger. Unfortunate. If he'd had more people with him, he might have been harder to target."

They moved down the stairs of the underground station.

"I should have had more people following you," Sherlock mumbled, almost too quietly for John to hear, as they stepped onto the train and found their seats.

"Pardon me?" John said.

Sherlock chose that moment to study his shoes.

"So you admit it," John said. "You had me followed."

"Obvious." Sherlock smirked. He looked down the long line of the largely empty train carriage. Only two other passengers occupied it: an elderly woman reading a book, and a young teenage boy who was busy defacing his canvas running shoes with a ballpoint pen.

"Obvious?" John fought to keep his voice down. "I would say creepy, maybe. Intrusive, most definitely."

"Oh, John, you can't take offense. You're surprised, at least a bit. You didn't notice them, then. They're improving." Sherlock sounded almost proud.

"Sorry, who's improving?"

"My fan network."

"What?"

"My network. Of fans."

"Sorry?"

Sherlock stared straight ahead. "A small portion of my following like to think of themselves as working with my methods, developing skills similar to my own."

"Like a cult."

"Don't be melodramatic, John. Not a cult." He took a deep breath. "My fan base. From time to time, especially if I can't be somewhere myself, I set them simple tasks. Surveillance, mostly. I'm glad they were subtle about it, although I thought you would have guessed what was going on. I was told a crowd of them went into A&E one night with false symptoms, under the impression that you would be working there."

John put his hand over his eyes. "Okay. I'm going to ask this in as nice a way as possible, because right now I'm trying to think of some reason why you would have me followed that might not be considered rather sinister. Why?"

A long silence stretched out between them, filled by the sounds of the train moving down the track, the squeak of the brakes, doors opening, doors closing.

Sherlock finally spoke in the same quiet, low tone he'd used at the café, two weeks ago.

"I should have made it more clear, but your association with me makes you a target. I have no idea how aware James is of the investigation we're conducting into his recent activity, but I'd be willing to guess that if it isn't on his radar now, it soon will be. Although we've only barely just met, we've been seen together in public. I needed to make sure you weren't being watched."

John snorted. "Was that it."

"Yes. Why? I had to make sure you were safe."

John felt as though he were floating. If Sherlock were right, if there was some sinister web closing in around them, then they were stuck with each other. Somehow, it was just about perfect. They stood and readied themselves to exit the train.

"So that's how you knew about Mary."

"I didn't think you'd be so frequently in the company of one nurse," Sherlock said as they took the stairs up to street level, two at a time. "When I heard I—rather overreacted."

They emerged into the dull daylight. "I'd say so." A bubble of elation rose up in John.

Sherlock blinked. "I took in the data as it was presented. I weighed it, and used the balance of probability to determine the most likely conclusion."

"Balance of probability."

"Yes."

"You concluded that I was sleeping with a nurse because it was the most likely interpretation."

"Yes."

John thought it but didn't say it: _despite all your evidence to the contrary_. But what evidence did Sherlock really have? John had run away.

"You do like women," Sherlock said, as they approached the hospital.

"Excuse me?"

They passed a pair of uni-aged boys, helping a third boy negotiate what looked like a brand new cast on his leg. The boy awkwardly swung himself on crutches, while his mates laughed and held him, each taking an arm.

"It's your usual thing," Sherlock said, not lowering his voice in the slightest. "Liking women. Seeing women."

"I suppose, yeah." He had no idea where this could be going.

"But also men," Sherlock said, as they went through the hospital entrance. "Men sometimes, women mostly."

They reached the stairwell and took the stairs up to the second floor. John wouldn't have put it that way. The opportunities were fewer with men. It wasn't about what he liked or didn't like. Mostly it had been about what was expected of him.

"Listen." He stopped short of the door into the hallway. The stairwell wasn't the most private place for a conversation, but it wasn't the street, and it wasn't the path lab, in front of Molly. It seemed like they were alone. John lowered his voice to a soft whisper. "I've tried to say this already but I want it to be clear. I wouldn't have slept with her—not when." He gestured between them, helplessly.

Sherlock's face opened in an expression so soft, so vulnerable, it took John's breath away.

John couldn't form the words he wanted to. "I wouldn't. I just needed to focus on my work. You can understand that, I think."

"I think so."

Sherlock stepped closer. There was no air, no space between them.

"I should have waited, that day, at your place," John said. Sherlock's neck had a faint pattern of moles on the left side. John had noticed the larger mole on the right before, but not these. He shuddered, heavy with desire. "I shouldn't have left."

"You like the ambiguities." Sherlock's voice was low. He wasn't touching John, not physically, but his voice ground into John's low belly like a lewd hipbone.

"Christ."

"You like the free flow of one thing to another. It isn't about men and women for you. It's about desire. You think of yourself as a body, during sex, don't you? Not necessarily a man. You like to lose yourself in it. You're unusually attracted to the idea of no definitions. No limits."

At some point John had taken hold of the stairwell railing. He was gripping it too tightly, the one fixed point in a world that threatened to throw him off. Sherlock tilted his head. If this were another round of deductions, John liked it much better. Too much. Too much.

He managed to nod. "Spot on."

People always wanted to put everything in a box, neat definitions, tidy categories. John had never felt he'd quite fit, especially when it came to desire. Sherlock was right: it wasn't about wanting a man or a woman. It was about wanting.

"Incredible."

Sherlock took a step back, a look of wistful amusement replacing the earnest gaze of a moment before. "You think so?"

John wondered if, once they'd sorted out Mr. Sparrow and he'd helped himself through some of his grief, if maybe he could really relax about Sherlock, about everything that was happening between them. Sherlock was so full of storms and passions and complex rhythms that John couldn't begin to understand. But when the storms cleared, there was this. An understanding of which no one else was capable. Genius.

Maybe it was love. John wasn't sure: he'd never quite felt this way before.

He followed Sherlock into the hallway.

Molly greeted them from the back of the path lab, dark circles under her eyes, her hair pulled back into a messy bun. She handed Sherlock paperwork. He flipped through it, and passed it to John.

John's throat tightened as he read. Nothing John had seen in Mr. Sparrow's charts could have predicted his death, not when it happened. He blinked hard. He couldn't cry, not here, not in front of Sherlock and Molly. He placed the report on the worktop, swallowed to try to clear his tear ducts, and blinked up at the fluorescent lights.

Molly slid a mug of tea toward him, nudging it against John's hand. She spoke quietly.

"Stomach contents were minimal, but nothing unexpected. He should have eaten dinner, and it seems he did, a bit. Slow digestion, common in old age."

John nodded and gripped the edge of the table. He needed to hear this, needed to understand. It wouldn't change the fact that Mr. Sparrow was dead, but it might help him find some closure.

"There was a bruise on his left knee. From the fall. No other signs of trauma. But some anomalies."

Sherlock stood on the other side of the counter. John glanced up at him. Sherlock's gaze was fixed on John, his beautiful face watching. He would stand as a witness to this. Fair enough. And good.

"There was no trace of poison, nothing I could identify," Molly continued, her voice almost a whisper. "But his blood showed elevated levels of cortisol and catecholamines. He experienced a significant stress event, just before death."

"Cardiac incident?" John asked.

"No damage to the heart muscle. Some sclerosis of the arteries. Nothing unexpected, given his age. In fact he was in pretty good shape."

"Nash said something about aneurysm."

"No," Molly said. "Sometimes it's a best guess, in situations like this."

John shifted uncomfortably. He would have words for Nash, the next time he saw him.

"I had his charts sent over from the nursing home, from before he came here." She flipped to a hand drawn graph. She'd done a lot of work, beyond what she'd had to. "See here: there's a linear, traceable decline in liver function, starting six months ago. Routine blood and urine tests were intermittent at the nursing home, but there was no hint of this issue a year ago. Then here--" She flipped to another page, and showed him test results from a month ago. "See? Sudden improvement. Something must have changed. He was getting better."

John frowned at the test results. "Hang on. These earlier tests from the home are much worse than he was last week. And these, from right before he was admitted to hospital, are better." Whatever had happened to Mr. Sparrow, it hadn't followed a pattern of natural decline.

Molly pulled another sheet of paper from the file, and placed it in front of John. Mr. Sparrow's admissions forms.

"They brought him to hospital because of suspected pneumonia."

"I didn't know that," John said. "There was nothing about it in his charts."

"Here." Molly moved over to a light box mounted on the wall opposite the windows. Sherlock watched as John followed her, his eyes sharp, as if John's reactions were just as much a part of solving the case as Molly's data.

"This is the chest x-ray that came with him from the nursing home, nine days ago."

The x-ray showed some consolidation, an area of white density in the lower lobe of the right lung, where healthy tissue would have been darker.

"No," John said.

"No?" Sherlock spoke from behind him.

"No. I examined him. There were no abnormal lung sounds. With this level of infection, he should have been coughing. There would have been clinical signs. He was never prescribed antibiotics."

"Just like you thought," Molly said, addressing her words to Sherlock.

"This doesn't make sense," John said. "Why would this be in his chart?"

"Pretence, John. An excuse to bring him here. To put him back in the orbit of whoever had been poisoning him up until a month earlier." 

A complex machinery of suspicion and anger clicked into place, but the answer failed to materialise. John knew he should be remembering some detail he couldn't quite get hold of.

"A month," he said. "A month ago?"

"That's right," Molly said. "He improved, and then he came here, and then he began to decline again."

She pointed to more figures in Mr. Sparrow's chart.

John's mind spun over the details. He needed more data. "So what was the cause of death? Are you saying it was poison? Something toxic that he was being given, somehow?"

"Inconclusive," Molly said. "I'm sorry. It certainly does look that way, given his tests, but there was nothing in his blood or tissues, nothing traceable."

John scrubbed at his face with both hands. "There isn't anything else?"

"When we suspect it's foul play, we look for all possibilities," Molly said. "Sherlock has—in his work he's had some experience with what professionals can do. Especially when you're hoping to pass a murder off as a natural death, your options are limited."

John blinked at the two of them.

Sherlock spoke. "Needle punctures in unusual places. Between the toes is a popular choice. Or an increase in blood levels of routine medications. Just enough morphine to suppress respiration, for example. An unfortunate combination of sleep aids and painkillers. Or a mechanical death: crushed internal structures. Windpipe is a popular choice."

"Nothing like that here," Molly said.

"Must be some new technique," Sherlock said, his voice tipped with excitement. "Nothing I've seen before."

"But they were working on him, gradually," Molly chimed in. "There's plenty of evidence to suggest it."

"Killing him, over the course of months," John said, still trying to understand the pattern. He thought of the bathtub suicide case Sherlock and Molly had shown him, the woman who'd killed herself in small increments.

 Sherlock tilted his head. "But then, for whatever reason, they decided to speed up the process, end it," he prompted.

_End him._

John flipped to the summary page of Mr. Sparrow's blood and urine tests, then back at the labs he'd ordered himself. He ran his finger under the line representing last week's test. "See here," he said. "He seemed to be improving in the last few days. I saw it myself. He was definitely brighter, more energetic. He even told me he was feeling better. What happened?"

"Perhaps whoever was working on killing him couldn't get to him," Sherlock said. "Or it was too high risk. Some new variable had come in."

John stared at Sherlock. "Things are pretty well standardized on a palliative ward. The whole thing runs like clockwork. Like really slow clockwork."

A smile crossed Sherlock's lips. "There was one variable, John. Perhaps it's difficult for you to see it, but I can, right now."

John looked at Molly, wondering if she might slip and tell him the answer. The corner of her mouth quirked up. She straightened the papers in her hands.

"Me," John said. "I was the only new thing on the ward."

"Yes," Sherlock said. "You paid attention, John. You listened. Unfortunately for our assassin, you got to know Mr. Sparrow. You got close to him. And don't take this the wrong way, but that in itself might have shifted conditions enough to necessitate his death."

Molly cleared her throat and found something to do on the other side of the lab.

"You're saying it was my fault," John said.

"No," Sherlock said. "I'm saying he was doomed to begin with. You got in the way. If anything, you disrupted their plans. Made it less convenient." He smiled faintly. "You're lucky they didn't come after you."

John squeezed his eyes shut. He was still thinking about the rhythms of the ward, the way everything had moved forward, irrevocably, too slow and too fast all at once.

Sherlock was still speaking. "The real question is why? Why would someone want to murder Lee Sparrow? Could he have seen something? Did he know something because of his time as a club owner? Think, John. What did you talk about? Was there anything he said, anything suspicious at all?" 

"I spoke to him, but it was personal, nothing anyone would kill for," John said. _Except the most relentless bigots._ "He talked about his life. He showed me photographs, of him and his—" he blinked at Molly, eyelids fluttering. _Jesus John, just say it_. "—his boyfriend. Leo, his name was. Leonard. They were together for a long time."

He tapped his shirt pocket. Where had he put the picture? His wallet. He pulled it out, fumbled the photograph of Mr. Sparrow and Leo, and handed it to Sherlock. He couldn't bring himself to meet Sherlock's gaze.

Sherlock held the photo in his long fingers, his mouth pressed into an illegible line. He gingerly handed it back.

"Talking to him, it was—I don't know, nice?" John said. "And his nephew. He showed me a picture of him too. He passed away. Mr. Sparrow told me about how he died."

"How?" 

John furrowed his brow. "Well, he said something strange about it. He said it was ruled a suicide, but he didn't believe it."

"Go on."

"It's too much of a coincidence, isn't it? Two suspicious deaths in one family?"

"This is important. Did he say why he thought the nephew hadn't killed himself?"

"Hang on."

"Do hurry, John. I can feel you thinking from here. It's rather painful."

Molly made a scolding noise. "Sherlock. Don't crowd him." She pushed her way out through the double doors of the lab. "And don't break anything. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Exhaustion and grief had drained John's resources. He combed back through the details of that conversation with Mr. Sparrow, as hard as it was to remember. "Hang on. He said his nephew met someone, just before he died. He'd just met someone, and he was happy about it. That's why Mr. Sparrow was surprised. I suppose he thought his nephew had more than enough reason to live. Lots to look forward to."

Sherlock began pacing. "Honestly, John, I need facts, not your sentimental opinions. Please refrain from muddying the waters with your ideas about romantic love."

John took a deep breath. He wondered how it was possible to want to yell at someone as badly as he wanted to kiss him.

"Fine," he said. "But that's what he told me. He didn't think a man who had just rekindled an old crush could possibly think about killing himself."

Sherlock stopped pacing, and wheeled on John. "What?"

"What?"

"At first you said the nephew had just met someone. Someone new. But just now, you said _an old crush_."

"Yes, that's right. Mr. Sparrow said his nephew had run into someone he knew when he was a boy. An old friend. And now they'd met after all those years, and I suppose he said his nephew was half in love with this friend, and there they were, all grown up and meeting again."

Sherlock stared at him, all dark tousled hair and raised eyebrows over pale eyes. He turned his head to the side, eyes tracking John as if waiting for John to arrive at some obvious conclusion.

"And shortly after, the nephew turns up dead," John said.

"Yes." Sherlock drew out the word, his voice filling the space of the lab, teasing more conclusions from John. "What else?" A smile played across his lips.

John stared at Sherlock.

A childhood friend, returned. Well, "friend." And then a tragedy, an apparent suicide. Was it possible for all these different threads to converge so clearly, so obviously? Why now? Why here, at this hospital?

"Are you saying it's all James Moriarty?" He lowered his voice as he spoke the name.

Sherlock smiled. "If it isn't, then the world is a much worse place than even I am willing to imagine. But you said Lee Sparrow showed you a picture of his nephew. Where is that picture now?"

"As far as I know, still in his room. He had a notebook. I didn't get a good look at all of it, but I'm sure there were more pictures, and it seemed like he was writing in it most days."

"Let's go."

***

They arrived at long term care to find the nurse's station unoccupied.

John led the way down to Mr. Sparrow's room, sorrow blooming in his chest again at the thought that he wouldn't get the chance to have another conversation with him, or share another cup of tea.

Someone had already stripped the bed.

John moved to the metal bedside table and pulled open the drawer. It was completely empty. Not so much as a scrap of paper or a plastic pen.

"It's gone," John said.

Sherlock lifted his eyebrows. He wore the expression of a man who had run out of patience waiting for John to catch up. Of course. If this was murder, whoever had done it wouldn't leave any trace of what Mr. Sparrow knew behind.

"I should have expected that, shouldn't I?"

"We had to look," Sherlock said, as he examined the edge of the metal window frame with his fingertips.

"Shouldn't you wear gloves for that?" John asked.

 "Why?"

"It's a crime scene, isn't it?"

"I doubt anyone will acknowledge it as such. It would be best for everyone involved if we kept it quiet. Lestrade will know, but not in any official capacity."

"Right." John shut the metal drawer. "What do we do now?"

Sherlock had gone completely still. He stared at the open doorway of the room.

Mary stood there, an empty box in her hand. She'd managed, again, to come all the way down the hall without making a sound.

"I didn't expect to see you here on your day off," she said.

Despite the fact that she addressed John, she stared at Sherlock, head tilted. She held the empty box in front of her as though she wanted to put something between herself and them. Like a weapon, John thought.

"Ah," Sherlock said, smiling so that his entire face crinkled. "This must be that nurse you told me about, John." He stepped forward, extending a hand for Mary to shake.

Mary had to shift the box to her left hand so she could reciprocate.

"I'm Sherlock Holmes," he said. "Sorry to intrude here. It's just I ran into John in the cafeteria and we were about to go look for a decent coffee, and he told me he needed to pop back up here to find—what was it, John? Oh yes, your watch."

"That's right," John said, marvelling at the stream of friendly words tumbling from Sherlock's mouth.

"Sherlock Holmes," Mary repeated, her voice as cool as it could be, as she squeezed his hand, and examined him, taking in his soft clothes, the black t-shirt that slid off his shoulder, the soft grey trousers. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

John took a half step forward. He didn't like Mary standing in such close proximity to Sherlock. Not at all.

"I'm locally well known," Sherlock said, defiant. "I'm in a band."

A faint smile passed over her lips. "That must be it. Read about you in the paper, didn't I?" 

The mood in the room declined as Sherlock maintained his grip on Mary's hand. She seemed equally determined not to flinch away.

"We're called The Empty House. Are you familiar with that metaphor at all? It's from psychology."

Mary blinked slowly, her lips pressing together. "I am. Based on a story, isn't it? Some old gothic horror."

"Blackwood."

"Yes. Hare borrowed the name, for his early work on psychopathy. Interesting stuff, if a little bit unimaginative."

"That isn't a criticism one usually hears directed at psychologists," Sherlock said. "If anything I would think a lack of imagination would prove valuable in that field. Stops any tendency to exaggerate."

"Still," Mary said. "People love a good fairy tale. Psychopaths, roaming the streets just aching for a good murder. Everyone loves a boogeyman."

Suddenly it was obvious to John, all of it. Mary moved like a soldier, conducted herself with cold aggression. His hands and feet were freezing, he realised. If he didn't get hold of himself, he would start to shake.

"Don't they just?" Sherlock said. "If only they knew that there are real monsters out in the world, wearing human masks and passing themselves off as regular people."

The two of them held each other's gaze for a long while. Finally, Sherlock released her hand.

"How do you know each other?" Mary said.

"We're colleagues," Sherlock said. "Working on a project together."

John stepped forward. "Friends," he corrected. He wanted to see Mary's face change. "Good friends." 

She looked down the length of his body and up again, raised her eyebrows, and smirked. John felt as though all the layers of his self-presentation were being stripped away. He would endure it.

A month. Mary said she'd been on long term care for a month. John swallowed hard. He could feel his face growing red. It had to have been her, didn't it?

She'd even made fun of him about taking tea with Mr. Sparrow. God, the tea. Was that how she was poisoning him? Had John interrupted her plans, when he took over that afternoon ritual?

"I'm looking for Mr. Sparrow's things," he said. "He had a notebook."

"Gone." She brandished the empty box.

"Awfully quick, wasn't it?" Sherlock said. "What was the rush?"

She shrugged. "No next of kin. No friends, not on record. No one to pass it on to, was there?"

John couldn't keep the hiss from his voice. "Well, we could always have asked at the nursing home. They might have had different information there."

If she had flinched, John would have been after her, in her face, accusing. She didn't. She blinked, and shrugged. "I doubt that," she said. "They're the ones who filled the forms in for him, didn't they?"

"Where did you take his things?" John asked.

"Incinerator. No use having rubbish lying around."

Sherlock exchanged a look with John, just a subtle slide of his eyes. John struggled to keep his expression steady.

Mary shifted the box from one hand to the other. "I should go. Some of us are still on duty, you know."

She left the frame of the doorway. Her footfalls made no sound as she walked down the hall.

John shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

Sherlock pushed past him toward the doorway, looking down toward the nurse's station. "She's gone," he said.

"My God," John said. "I think—"

"Not here. There's nothing else we can do here."

John went to the metal drawer and took one more look inside it. He hoped there'd be something—a piece of paper, something taped to the underside, some scrap. Nothing. It was too much to expect, that Mr. Sparrow might have known he was about to die, might have left some kind of clue.

"John. We have to go."

There was no sign of Mary as they passed the nurse's station.

They got out of the building, out into the courtyard. Sherlock eyed the windows looking down on them from the long term care floor. "It isn't safe here," he told John as he swiftly crossed the open space. "Let's move."

Minutes later, they were in Postman's Park. Sherlock pointed to a bench. The two of them sat side by side, opposite the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a wooden structure that housed a wall covered with ceramic tiles, each one representing a person who'd died trying to save someone. Not soldiers; not police or firemen. Just regular people. John had spent a bit of time, in his first days of study at Barts, reading the tiles. He'd lingered over _Alice Ayres, daughter of a bricklayer's labourer, who by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house in Union Street Borough at the cost of her own young life_ , on _April 24, 1885,_  and also  _David Selves aged 12_ , who _off Woolwich supported his drowning playfellow and sank with him clasped in his arms_ , on _September 12, 1886_. Sitting next to Sherlock, now, John thought of those heroes. He wondered if anyone would ever know what Sherlock Holmes did for the people of London. He wondered if anyone would remember. 

It was getting on to evening, the sky darkening and heavy with low cloud, threatening rain. The park was nearly empty. Time for normal people to head home for a meal and telly. John's hands shook.

Sherlock spoke first. "Are you all right?"

John laughed. He was far from all right, but at least everything he'd been through was beginning to make a kind of sense. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, you did just spend the last week and a half working alongside a trained assassin."

John blinked. "Military training."

"Yes, I'd say so, based on the way she moves and assesses a room. Not to mention the fact that there isn't really a need for any nurse to carry a gun in a leg holster, unless long term care gets wilder than I would have imagined."

John made a weak noise of frustration.

"John?"

"She brought him tea every afternoon, but as far as I know, only him. He thought—he didn't like her, not really. I never thought to ask if they had a history. And when I started bringing his tea instead, he started getting better. Christ, Sherlock."

"Yes. If she was administering poison, it wasn't anything that lingered in the body tissues. It wasn't the tea that killed him, although that might have been the original plan. You did interrupt her, for what it's worth, although even if you'd known, you probably wouldn't have succeeded in stopping her."

"I should have known," John said. "I should have seen. I mean I did know. I thought about it. There was something off about her. I just didn't put it together fast enough."

Sherlock leaned forward on the bench. His hand rose to his upper arm. He scratched at it. "This is dangerous," he said, as if speaking not to John, but to himself.

"What do we do?"

Sherlock studied his hands. "What do you want to do?"

"I just spent the last week and a half working side by side with a woman who was sent to kill an old man. A good man. We've made the connection to Moriarty, yes? We think it was James who was after the nephew, and possibly arranged to kill him."

"True." Sherlock's gaze was fixed on the middle distance. His whole manner had slowed, his voice hushed. "I expect you'll want to step away. The more distance you put between us, the better off you'll be."

John cleared his throat. He had to make sure Sherlock understood him, because he'd never felt so alive. He was angry, yes. Outraged, but he wasn't scared. His blood was humming and his skin sang and he was ready, so ready to step into the wide open space that life had just opened to him. He couldn't say no, and wouldn't.

"Never," was all he said.

Sherlock turned and looked at him, a smile playing on his lips.

"No?"

"No." As declarations of love went, it was surely efficient, albeit incomplete. John found that he was smiling. "I'm here. You can't tell me to stop."

"And I won't," Sherlock replied.

From his place on the bench beside John, Sherlock radiated brilliance and heat and promise. He was so much more than a young man in a worn t-shirt. He was life itself.  

John watched a man walk an elderly beagle down the path in front of them. "Besides, I don't think it's about you any more."

"Pardon?"

"Not just about you. Think about it. I wasn't supposed to be on long term care this week. I was reassigned to the unit immediately before Mr. Sparrow transferred in. Whoever put him there put me there too. That's—that's right, isn't it? No coincidence."

"The universe is rarely so lazy."

"And there Mary was. She—well, she behaved like someone whose job it was to try to get as close to me as possible."

Sherlock met John's speech with silence.

"I'm a target, like you said."

"I suppose you are."

"Makes two of us then."

Sherlock was grinning now. "Regrets?"

"The last time I looked, I involved myself," John said. "You told me everything. You told me it was dangerous, and here I am. I don't want to be anywhere else. I wouldn't be."

"Risk," Sherlock said.

"Risk?"

"Most people would run in the face of danger. Then again, most people like things neat and tidy, well defined. And most dislike being made jealous. John, you're an anomaly. You might just do after all."

John found himself beaming now, grinning at the empty lawn in front of them. The evening stirred with a warm, humid breeze. He wondered idly if there were eyes on them here and now. It was time to start practicing not caring.

He slipped his hand onto the bench between them, and took Sherlock's hand.

"Might I?"

"Yes."

They sat for a long moment, the setting sun blinding them, danger on all sides. John closed his eyes. He was ready. He was so ready.

"John," Sherlock finally said, "I will need to take some time, the next day or two, to make some arrangements."

John suddenly feared that Sherlock meant to do himself harm. _Arrangements_ sounded funereal. "What do you mean?"

Sherlock withdrew his hand, and turned on the bench to face him. "I want you to believe me when I say that being in grave danger with you is a thing that I would like very much. It would be best, however, if I were to throw James off the scent. We need time to investigate further. If he's sending assassins after you, it means we've gotten very close, very fast."

"So? How do we get more time?"

Sherlock's voice grew eager. "Back when I knew him, before, I tried, on occasion, to get away from his influence. Any time I did, well, the less said about that, the better. I failed. Many times. When I failed, he always knew. He would wait, and watch me, have me watched, for signs."

"Signs of what?" John kept his voice steady, to his own credit. He didn't like the sound of this.

"That I was coming around to his way of thinking again. John, I did things then, and I've done things all my life, destructive things. Sometimes to others. Largely to myself. I know I'm being watched, as are you; that much is clear. If I behave in certain ways now, if I leave a certain type of clue, he'll think I'm coming back. He'll wait for me to escalate."

"Hang on, what are you saying?"

Sherlock placed a hand on John's knee, and squeezed. He leaned in, his lips brushing John's ear as his voice buzzed warmly. "I'm saying I'll be putting on a show. Don't worry. You'll have your part to play, when it's time. You'll be hearing from me."

John's breath caught and stuttered. Sherlock pressed his lips to the side of John's neck. The world tilted, as if John were falling backwards into something thick and warm. Sherlock's lips parted against his skin, and his tongue circled wetly.

John gasped. Across the park, a woman picked up a small toddler and shot them a scandalised look.

"My God," John growled. "Don't go. You can't. Not now."

Sherlock murmured in his ear. "Don't worry. I'll see you very soon." His hand squeezed John's knee, and John's eyes fluttered closed.

By the time John managed to open them again, Sherlock was gone. John sat on the bench while the world grew darker around him, and a thousand black orchids of love and lust blossomed in his chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [All the Madmen](https://youtu.be/oeaj2RmREpE).
> 
> [You Go to My Head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGNc1yLGPug).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear friends, I don't want to spoil this chapter for you, but I want you to know that it depicts drug use in a mostly (but not entirely) positive light. I've tried to remain faithful to the spirit of the era in this. If you're concerned that it might be an issue for you, please read the tags carefully. I've updated them to reflect anything that I think might be of concern. I love you and I want you to be safe.

* * *

**Here Today, Gone Tomorrow**

_Each time you come, you leave a little sorrow._

 

John opened his eyes on Friday morning to the sound of someone knocking on his door, three loud, sharp raps. He blinked at the ceiling. Cracks spiderwebbed out from a water stain directly above his head.

The bedsit was a lonely craphole. He really should try to do better.

Three more knocks disrupted his reverie. He stood, wobbled on his feet, found a pair of jeans, and pulled them on.  

It had taken him too long to get to sleep. Worry, and amazement, and a longing like a fine red thread, had kept him on the verge of wakefulness all night long.

Sherlock's past haunted John, as much for what he didn't know, as what he did. Sherlock's words to John on the park bench, sealed by the kiss he'd applied to John's neck, had stayed with him through the night.

_I did things then, and I've done things all my life, that are destructive._

And he'd had things done to him. Of that John had no doubt.

That circle tattoo, the way Sherlock always rubbed it. Part of him was still stuck in the time he'd spent with James Moriarty. He'd been so young, a child. And then a teenager, confused, and high on the idea that he was different.

In John's dreams, Sherlock had screamed, face painted, howling into a microphone, sweat dripping, the _o_ of his mouth turning into a hissing snake that devoured its own tail.

 _I'll be putting on a show_. Whatever Sherlock was doing to signal James, he was making a devil's bargain. He had to be.

The knocks sounded again. John pulled on a dirty t-shirt and stumbled for the door.

The haughty bloke from outside Sherlock's apartment stood in the hallway. Sherlock's brother, John corrected himself. Michael? No, the name was something stranger than that.

"John Watson." The man lifted his chin, imperious in his three piece suit. "Mycroft Holmes."

"Hello."

"Might I come in?" Mycroft's nostrils flared as he peered over John's shoulder at the room beyond. "I wouldn't impose, but this is a matter requiring discretion."

John stepped back to allow Mycroft to pass. He'd been a bit of a bastard, hadn't he, the first time they'd met? Sherlock certainly didn't seem to think much of him. The interfering older brother, who sometimes took Sherlock away. Family business, whatever that meant.

Mycroft placed the tip of his umbrella down on the carpet, eyes scanning the unmade bed, the chair with John's clothes strewn across it, the dishes piled beside the sink. John chafed at the scrutiny. It wasn't like him to let things go like he had.

He cleared his throat. "What's this about then?"

Mycroft winced. "My brother has taken it upon himself to do some particularly stupid things. Last night, especially. Do you have any idea why?"

"What happened?" He was suddenly wide awake.

"He picked a fight with a vagrant, one considerably larger than himself."

"Is he all right?" 

"Remarkably so. Bruised ribs. Some scratches. A black eye."

"Okay."

People always got interested in watching a fight. Any time John'd had a bit of a dustup, a crowd gathered. As far as Sherlock was concerned, getting into a scrap might just be his way of saying hello to James.

"What else?"

"He has procured rather a large quantity of drugs. Heroin, and cocaine. Some more obscure chemical constituents. He's retreated to a lab that he uses from time to time."

Mycroft watched him closely, his eyebrow lifting. John returned the gaze, defiant. _So?_ _So what?_

John had assumed Sherlock used, given who he was, and what he did. He'd wondered when drugs would come up. He'd rather hoped it would happen privately, when the two of them were alone together, in some more ideal future, when they'd already become intimate. When there would be time to talk.

"That doesn't concern you? As a doctor?"

It did concern him, but he wasn't about to tell Mycroft that. "As a doctor, I've learned that the difference between pharmaceutical and recreational drugs is one of quality control and correct dosage. He's a genius, isn't he? If he's making his own, presumably he knows what he's doing."

"He is, unfortunately, rather good at chemistry. As for you, I'm aware you've dabbled."

John felt his face flush. Mycroft wasn't just a bloke in a fine suit, well groomed, conservative. John had a sudden sense of him as a spider at the centre of a web, waiting for threads to twitch.

Like practically everyone his age, John had smoked pot. Nothing to be ashamed of there. But he'd spent enough time with men, in places where men went to be together, to experiment with harder stuff. He'd tried coke, and hadn't liked it. It shut him down, made him feel even more disconnected from the people around him than usual. He'd done poppers, under the tutelage of a bloke he'd met out clubbing. It had certainly helped things along with what they'd done in the back of the bloke's van. He'd thought no one had seen.

He stared at Mycroft's hand where it held the handle of his umbrella, and made a quick mental calculation. A lie would probably only provoke Mycroft to say more, to tell John exactly how much of his personal history was as easy to read as the daily paper. He didn't want to know.

"All right. Yes."

Mycroft reached into an interior pocket of his jacket, and fished out a small notebook. He opened it and scanned through a page or two. "Dr. Chapman considers you one of the best physicians in your year. He wonders why you declined to go in for surgery." Mycroft glanced down at John's hand, which had curled into a fist. "He doesn't know about the hand."

A slow, creeping anxiety worked its way up John's spinal column. "That's—" He couldn't say "private." Disturbing. "Why are you here, exactly?"

"Doctor Watson, my brother has no acquaintances with whom he has spent the kind of time he has with you, not even his band." Mycroft spoke the last word as if it would burn him on the way out of his mouth. "And here you are, an enthusiast, apparently, and one in whom he's taken an interest very quickly."

John shook his head. "Seriously, what are you doing? You know this isn't normal, right? You know it's creepy as hell."

Mycroft smiled. "I am simply trying to understand."

"Understand what?"

"Why you have involved yourself with my brother."

John was breathing hard. If Mycroft wanted to challenge his right to see Sherlock, he was in for a fight. "What do you want?"

"My brother has a history. How much has he told you?"

"I would say that's none of your business."

He wouldn't have thought Mycroft could raise his chin any higher, but he managed it somehow. "Allow me to presume that your behaviour in the last fortnight implies that you intend to spend more time with him."

"I do." John waited for Mycroft to tell him to back off. That had to be the reason behind the visit, the implied threats. 

Mycroft studied the handle of his umbrella, and nodded. "Good."

"Excuse me?"

"I want you to continue your involvement."

John allowed himself a measure of weak relief. "That's it? That's why you came here?" _Not a problem_ , he thought. _Try and stop me_.

"Indeed." Mycroft pulled an envelope from his suit jacket. "And to offer additional incentive, if you are at all inclined to need any." The envelope was thick. If it contained cash, it looked like a lot.

John's fist clenched at his side, an ill timed spasm moving through it. "Put that away."

"Are you certain?"

"I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

Mycroft shrugged, an expression of mild surprise crossing his face as he tucked the envelope back in his pocket.

"So you came here to try to bribe me, is that it?" This meeting was growing stranger and stranger.

"My brother is under threat. I don't think I need to tell you that. He is also a danger to himself. It's the latter that concerns me."

Down on the street, someone leaned on a car horn for several long seconds. The sound carried through John's window, along with the damp summer breeze. Nine a.m., and it was still chilly. John had woken in the night with a feeling that he couldn't breathe, and propped the window open.

Sherlock had asked John to trust him. _I hope, if things seem amiss, you'll understand_. Well, they did seem pretty damned off. He was no babysitter, and he certainly wasn't for hire.

"I don't need your money."

Mycroft's mouth twitched into a half smile. "So you'll see him again."

"I have plans to. But not immediately. The last thing he did was tell me to wait on his word."

"Wait no longer." Mycroft drew a business card from his pocket, and handed it over.

The front had Mycroft's name and a phone number, no information about his job title or where he worked. Strange. On the back was a scrawled note: _Dear_ _John, Disregard the ghoul delivering this. Come to the show tonight. Yours, Sherlock._

John fought back a grin. At least he could be certain the note was from Sherlock.

"Will you go?"

"Yes."

Their eyes locked. John couldn't read the expression on Mycroft's face. It might have been relief. It might have been toothache. 

John moved to the door, opened it, and stepped aside to let Mycroft pass.

Mycroft paused in the hallway, not turning back to face John as he spoke. "Please, don't leave him by himself," he said.

John shut the door. "I won't," he vowed, under his breath, to the empty room.

***

He was tempted to dress formally. Something about Mycroft's visit had got John thinking about the suit hanging in his closet. If big brother approved—in his own, bizarre, fashion—maybe John should be thinking about tonight as an official date. In the end, he settled on a t-shirt and jeans.

He was ready to go at 6:30 pm, far too early. He paced his narrow room, looking for something more to do. He'd tidied, making the bed with hospital corners, tucking the sheets and blanket in forcefully. Laundry: done. Dishes: done. Everything put away.

He sat in the chair by the window. A mistake. Being still allowed him to feel how restless he was inside, waves of tension rolling through him and over him, threatening never to break, but to whip themselves up into a storm.

He breathed deeply, trying to make the exhale a little longer and slower than the inhale, to slow everything. It worked, a bit.

His eyes rested on the hardcover copy of _The Exorcist_ he'd used to prop his window open. A girlfriend had given it to him when it came out, and told him he would like it. He remembered staying up all night to read it in one go, nerves jangling, laughing at himself for being so freaked out by it. Devils and possession and things that go bump in the night. Rituals and sacrifice and restoring balance to the world.

He'd kept the book much longer than the girlfriend, and taken it with him through his tour of duty. Now it served to hold the window. It had grown fat, the pages plumped by the humidity and rain they'd absorbed. He ran his fingers along the spine. 

His whole life, John had thought the demons he had to fight were his own impulses. Everything he'd wanted. Everyone. He'd only ever fought himself.

The voice that told him he couldn't be exactly what he was, that was the real devil. That was his fear talking. It was time to stop listening. Time to let go. Dive in.

The rest depended on Sherlock. John picked up Mycroft's card from the windowsill and thumbed the edge of it, reading Sherlock's note over again. An explicit invitation. He wondered what it included.

He remembered Sherlock's performance, the second one. _You think you know, but you don't know me_. Sherlock howling, his desperation, the way he'd behaved that night, dancing with John, flirting, so close, and then shutting down. There was more to it than John had seen so far, of that he was sure.

There was time. They would figure it out together.

The clock on the wall ticked too loudly. Irritated, John stood and checked his pocket for his keys. He couldn't stay here any longer, sweating out the minutes while he waited for night to come. He would walk all the way to the bar if he had to, to soak up the time before he could see Sherlock again.

Out on the street, the evening was still too bright, the air chilly and thick with humidity and car exhaust. Everyone John passed looked happy, in a way that seemed too easy, too uncomplicated to him.

He wondered how Sherlock would be tonight: face smeared with makeup, or dressed to the nines; wild and crawling across the stage, or sedate, disciplined.

John cut through a small park. A woman in a gauzy red dress smiled at him, her gaze direct. He nodded, quickening his pace as he imagined Sherlock's lithe body underneath his hands.

_You like the ambiguities. Jealousy. Risk._

John blinked into the sun. It was low on the horizon now, making a brief appearance between clouds before setting for the night. A car horn bleated in the street ahead of him, and a man yelled an obscenity. John let the small drama blow past him. He was caught in a warm bubble of lust and hope, pulled along the sidewalk by everything he wanted to happen.

 _You might just do after all_.

Sherlock was in his head, in his blood. The air dampened John's t-shirt, coated the bare skin of his arms with a clammy film. Cold. He should have brought a jacket, but he wanted to travel lightly, unburdened.

It was barely 7:30, still far too early to go to the bar. He didn't want to hang around there like a creep, and he didn't want to drink too much. He passed a café and glanced at the menu hanging in the window. He should eat. Maybe have a coffee.

The waitress had just brought his food when a girl walked past his table and ducked down beside him. She came up with a piece of paper, folded.

"You dropped this," she said, and put it beside his plate.

"Sorry?"

He looked up at her, but she was already on her way out the door.

He glanced around before opening the paper. The other customers seemed completely oblivious to him. Most people had come here with someone else. They were all absorbed in talking to each other.

He recognised Sherlock's handwriting from the note on the back of Mycroft's card.

_They are watching. So am I._

John smiled as he tucked the note into his jeans pocket. He was more awake now, more aware. Mundane reality was a false cover over the drama that played out all around him. He was part of something. Sherlock made him feel that. He finished his coffee, and tapped his nails against the empty mug, tunelessly.

 _Risk_.

He walked with a purpose as he finally headed for the bar, moving through a dream of a life where everything had a deeper meaning. Yes, he supposed Sherlock was right in his assessment. John liked risk, more than a little. It moved into his nerves, and set him ablaze.

If Sherlock knew that, then surely he'd known, when he sent that note, what it would do to John. 

He moved faster, his heart bursting with excitement. He and Sherlock would talk again, soon. They would be together again, tonight. What was there to stop them? Nothing.

About a block from his destination, the crowd on the pavement started to thicken. John weaved between people, his stature working in his favour. Nobody minded much, being cut off by someone they barely noticed.

Outside the bar, a crowd spilled out onto the street. Through the windows, John could see that the place was packed, wall to wall people, the tables stacked and shoved to the perimeter of the room. It was cool out on the pavement, but John imagined it would be murder inside.

"Mate!" Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find Greg grinning at him, eyes sparkling. "How are you?"

John shook his hand. "Fine, yeah. What's happening?"

"Big night." Greg took a drag off his cigarette.

"Why's that?"

"Oh, I thought he would have told you. Special guest and all that."

John shrugged.

"You'll see. It's going to be brilliant, really amazing. I was sent out to fetch you, make sure you got a spot where you could see."

John raised his eyebrows. The timing couldn't be mere coincidence. _I'll be putting on a show._ Literally, then. 

"We'll have to push our way in," Greg said, nudging John with his shoulder. "You up for it?"

"Hell yes."

They shoved their way past the bar, where a trio of bartenders struggled to keep up with orders. There was barely room to move, but Greg was good with his elbows, and cleared a path for them to where Molly stood, holding a spot about ten feet back from the stage.  

They'd just had time to say hello, when the lights dimmed. The crowd hushed, and a single light illuminated the stage. Sherlock stepped out, backlit, his curls wild, his face in shadow.

He swayed on his feet, hips moving according to some internal rhythm all his own. He wore jeans and a t-shirt, feet bare: simple, careless, head down. Cheers and applause flooded the room. The rest of the band came onstage and took their places.

Rich tapped out a rhythm on the edge of a drum, and Mick played a chord on the piano. Froggie stood by the drum kit, nodding along, bass ready. A guitar player—no one John recognized—climbed up onstage as the crowd began to scream and holler.

The first few chords of one of Sherlock's songs—the one about the ear in the cardboard box—began to play.

Sherlock sang the first lines. "It's not yours any more. They sent it to me." His voice was deep and sonorous. It hit John straight in the chest, resonating. 

The band kicked in behind him, and Sherlock kept singing, but soon John couldn't hear anything but the roar of the crowd.

Someone stepped out on the stage behind Sherlock, a tall, lanky figure in outrageous costume, form-fitting latex shorts, and a vest bedecked with an ostrich's worth of black feathers. The boots he wore were thigh high, shiny and black, with inches and inches of heel. "You just wanted some attention," the new singer sang, and joined Sherlock in the chorus.

The lights went up on the stage, and the crowd went even more wild, screaming and holding up their hands. John jockeyed to keep his position next to Greg and Molly.

Sherlock was in the spotlight now. He wore an eye patch over his right eye. It looked like a fashion choice, but was no doubt covering the shiner he'd gotten last night. The war paint was back: red slashes marked his cheekbones, and lipstick, red as well, stained his lips. His left eye was heavily outlined in black, and painted with glittery eye shadow.

"I loved the way you listened," Sherlock sang, the other singer joining him in harmony.

John didn't follow the music scene much, but he recognized this ethereal man with the dyed orange and blonde hair. He'd just had a record out. That night, when John and Sherlock had danced together, they'd talked about this, the possibility of a gig.

The two of them stood at the front of the stage, singing Sherlock's song. Sherlock crouched as he howled out the chorus one more time, the cords in his neck straining, his pose feral. The other man sang with him, moved to him and ran his fingers through Sherlock's hair, as if petting a dog. Sherlock arched into the touch, his expression ecstatic.

John gasped, his mouth hanging open, his fingers burning with a need to do exactly what this man had just done.

Sherlock was on fire, panting and sweating as the song ended and the guitar player struck up a new riff, and there it was, the song that had made the famous bloke what he was.

"Ziggy played guitar," Sherlock sang, still on his knees, his low baritone dropping and growling, while the other singer came in on harmony. The song was slower than the recording John remembered, almost cabaret in its execution.

Sherlock stood, and the two of them oozed around the stage, circling each other while they poured the song out like honey. John's stomach flipped as Sherlock closed the space between him and the other man, running his hand through the ostrich feathers on his chest. John was sweating, the back of his t-shirt damp, torn between dying to see how far the two of them would go, and the urge to jump on the stage and claim Sherlock for his own.

He chose to distract himself. He leaned over to talk to Greg. "Is it true, that Sherlock got his wife off a murder charge?" He had to repeat the question twice, shouting in Greg's ear over a guitar solo.

"What do you think? I couldn't tell you. He offends everyone, except for the people he saves."

On the stage, Sherlock and the famous bloke were back to back, crooning the final notes of the song.

There were things John didn't know about Sherlock, about how he lived his life and how he related to the people around him. Mycroft's story, that John was somehow special, might not be entirely accurate. Sherlock had loads of people in his life, people he'd helped, and people who worshipped him.

The song changed, and Sherlock walked to the back of the stage. John pushed his fingers into his jeans pocket and felt the edge of the note Sherlock had sent him. _They are watching_.  _So am I._ Whatever the truth was, whether John meant something special to Sherlock or not, John was definitely Sherlock's. He smiled ruefully. So far gone, he didn't care if he ever came back.  

Greg leaned in to shout in John's ear. "All I know is, whatever he did to help, Sherlock deduced it from some interview on telly. Wrote to him with information and mentioned that he played here. Cheeky. Next thing you know, they're mates."

John didn't recognise the new song. It seemed to be about the world ending. Sherlock stood at the back of the stage, swaying to the music, head bent, as if deep in his own thoughts, only joining on the chorus. The audience sang along. Some people got out their lighters.

John looked out over the crowd. So many faces packed in together in the dark, all shining up at the stage. It was something, wasn't it? Sweat rolled down the small of his back. He shouldn't be jealous, not now. What Sherlock was doing, it was all for show, and not just for James Moriarty. For his fans. And it was beautiful. Everyone packed in together so they could feel the same thing, everyone being whoever they were, and feeling whatever they felt, because of Sherlock.

He caught sight of someone turned toward him, the one person who wasn't looking up at the stage. The face was round, boyish, dark hair swept back from large, expressive eyes. John watched back. It was one of those moments: you could never tell, in the dark, in a crowd like this, if someone was truly watching you, or was looking at something or someone behind you.

The man seemed to hold John's gaze for a few moments, then yawned luxuriantly, not bothering to cover his mouth, and leaned in toward the person next to him, his face still turned toward John. John couldn't see the person he was talking to. He only caught a glimpse of pale hair, before the man turned away and steered his companion into the crowd.

_They are watching._

John thought about elbowing Greg, saying something about it, but the man had already disappeared. Besides, there were so many parts of the case that Greg didn't know about, and Sherlock had asked John to use discretion. He would mention it to Sherlock later on, after the show.

The song finished. John clapped as the crowd around him exploded again, cheering and screaming. As the applause diminished, Sherlock walked to the front of the stage, a grin on his lips, hips swaying. He whispered something to the other man, and they both smiled, something like a look of mischief flashing between them.

"This is for John," the other bloke said into his microphone. 

At the sound of his name, a thrill ran through John, a burst of warmth in his chest. It was a little thing, just his name, but it meant everything. He felt for the note in his pocket again. Invitation. Acknowledgement.

So long as he knew he was wanted, he could make himself fit anywhere. He'd learned that very well. He could make love with blokes in back alleys, and match any doctor in the A&E. He could even make do in this world of glitter and makeup and the promise of sex and lurid crimes he only half understood. John was alive to all of it, the war and the art, the beauty and the danger.

The music struck up again, a tune that seemed brighter, a single guitar playing a cheery opening riff. Sherlock stood still, centre stage, a spotlight illuminating him, while the other bloke picked up a coil of rope.

The other man started singing first. The music kicked in, guitar and base and drum backing up an upbeat tune.

"You're like a sailor, with a girl on every shore. Stay with them now, or they won't see you no more." His voice was like smooth sand, running off warm fingertips.

As the famous bloke sang, he began looping the rope around Sherlock. With each new line, he wound Sherlock tighter, until his arms were pinned. Jesus.

"Like a gypsy, forever on the run. Stay for a while, while you look for a home."

Sherlock made a show of struggling as the other man bound him and drew him closer. John was suddenly aware of the lack of air in the room, of the closeness of the bodies packed all around him. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple. He struggled to slow his breathing.

Sherlock tied, sweating and flushed, was something he'd never imagined he'd see, not even under the most intimate of circumstances. To see him like this, in front of all these people, it was too much, and not enough, all at once.

The other man sang, "Like that sailor, please, come back again. Stay with them now, or they won't see you again. Like that gypsy caravan, forever on the run, you stay for a while, then you pick up and go."

Sherlock stumbled into him, apparently helpless, just in time to join him in the chorus. The two of them were inches apart, singing into the microphone the other man held.

"That's how you show your love for me. That's how you show your love for me. You're like here today, gone tomorrow. Each time you come, you leave a little sorrow."

Sherlock struggled, working his hands free to take the microphone for his turn on the next verse. The rope still bound his torso, looping over his shoulder, pulling tight across his chest and under his arms. As he moved, the material of his t-shirt bunched and pulled over his lanky frame.

Sherlock turned toward the crowd, staring John down with his single uncovered eye, as he crooned his way through his first line. "You're like that big big storm, that tore the town apart, leaving everyone to console their aching heart."

Sherlock wound the rope around his hand and wrist, and tugged it as the other man tangled himself in it. He smiled at John, just a subtle rise in the corner of his mouth, before he lifted his head and sang.

"Like that snow that fell, looked so wrong and out of place, you stay for a while, then you leave without a trace."

The other man turned, winding the rope around his legs, and falling to his knees. Sherlock pulled hard on it, urging the man to move toward him, at the same time as he swung his gaze down to meet John's again.

"Like that storm, that tore the town apart, you leave everyone to console their aching heart." The lines were urgent now, emphatic and fractured and all too beautiful. "Like that snow that fell, looked so wrong and out of place, stay for a while, then you leave without a trace."

The man had managed to writhe his way across the stage. Sherlock drew the ropes tighter, and fell to his knees, as they sang together again.

"That's how you show your love for me."

By the time they were singing "Here today, gone tomorrow," riffing on the chorus, all that separated their mouths was the microphone itself. They howled into each other's faces, screaming and pressing themselves together. The other man's arms were bound by the ropes, his body straining as Sherlock pulled him in even closer, groin to groin.

It was everything, lust and raw male need, two men defiant and caught and held, their voices battling, breath mingling.

_This is for John._

_Jealousy_.

This night, this was a seduction. This was Sherlock reading John like a book and knowing exactly what he needed.

John wondered how aware Sherlock was of the surgical precision of what he'd done, even as he squirmed to adjust himself in his jeans. It wasn't just jealousy that had him on the edge of very embarrassing arousal. It was an affirmation of everything John had allowed himself to imagine about Sherlock, about the way he lived, and what he did in the dark. It wasn't in the dark, though. It was in the spotlight, brazen. An invitation, and a challenge.

As the house lights went down, plunging the entire crowd into darkness, he laughed.

It was definitely time for him to step forward, to offer himself. Whatever Sherlock wanted, whatever he asked, John would give it.

When the lights came back up, the famous bloke and Sherlock were standing hand in hand, the rope discarded at their feet.

"That's all for tonight, thank you," the man said. He bowed, pulling Sherlock with him, then turned to him and drew him into his arms. He held Sherlock and said something into Sherlock's ear, and the two of them shared a smile. Sherlock nodded, leaned in, and said something in return, his left eye sliding over to catch John with a look. An invitation, then. A promise.

The two of them left the stage together holding hands.

The crowd was too dense around John for him to move, the room too dark, so he had no choice but to feel the growing distance between him and Sherlock like a silver chain, pinching as it threatened to pull his insides out.

The lights came up in the bar, far too bright. He worked to compose his face. He was all too sure that everything he felt was completely obvious.

Behind them, the crowd had started to thin, as people trickled out through the door, chatting happily, and singing snatches of tunes. This show was something they would brag about to their mates on Monday morning. 

Greg shuffled out of the way as space cleared around them. He stretched, arms spread wide, and groaned. "Christ, I spend too much time on my feet," he said, his eyes skimming John's face.

John nodded, searching through the crowd for the door at the back of the stage. He needed to get back there. A huge bouncer, arms folded, stood blocking the entrance.

Greg nudged his arm. "Well, the life of a rock star, right?"

John shrugged. "Yeah."

Molly looped her arm through John's, and pulled him toward the bar. "Drink," she said. "There's always some business at the back afterward, things to sort out. He'll probably be a while, but I'm sure he'll want to see you."

He pushed his way over to the bar and ordered three whiskeys. Greg and Molly followed.

The bartender poured generously. "No, John, your money's no good here," he said, waving his hand at the cash John offered. John startled at the use of his name.

The bartender was the same young thing he'd met his first night here. Davy, who always seemed to know what was going on.

"Thanks," he said.

Davy winked, his eyelids heavily bedecked with glitter. "I expect you won't have to wait too long," he said.

"Oh?"

"He's probably just—" he stopped himself, and smirked. "I'm sure he'll send someone out soon." 

John watched Davy for a moment, waiting for him to say something more. "All right."

John passed whiskey glasses to Greg and Molly, then drank his down in one go, his nerves jangling. He perched on a barstool, trying to hold himself still, to be cool.

"Are you all right?" Molly asked.

When he was younger, he'd always had a problem with fidgeting. Nervous energy. He'd thought the army had trained it out of him, but he found he couldn't stop his leg from bouncing. He slipped down off the stool again.

"Fine, yeah." He eyed the back of the bar, and wondered if he had time for another drink.

"I'm running the labs on your case again," Molly said.

John scrambled to think what she could be talking about.

 _Mr. Sparrow._ "Right. Any reason why?"

"Sherlock asked me to," she said. "We're looking for mineral deficiencies. He thinks there might be something there, something that would offer more information about his medical history."

"Ah."

"John Watson?"

The bouncer, his voice low-pitched and soft, stood beside them.

"Yes?"

"I'm to take you to the back."

Greg smiled at him. "We'll say our goodnights, then."

John followed the bouncer through the door at the back of the bar, to a long, narrow hallway with peeling wallpaper. The man led him to the second door on the right, and knocked.

"Yes?" Sherlock's voice called out.

"Doctor Watson for you, Sir."

"Good," Sherlock replied.

The bouncer retreated to his post at the end of the hall.

John sucked in a breath, and let it out slowly. His skin was on fire, every nerve alight with possibility. He was as keyed up as he would have been if Sherlock had spent the entire day tracing paths along John's skin with his fingers.

He opened the door and walked into a dressing room. It was larger than he'd expected, but just as seedy.

Sherlock sat at a table to the left of the door, elbows resting in a riot of makeup containers, lipsticks and mascara and pots of eye shadow and glitter everywhere. A huge mirror hung on the wall above the table. Sherlock fiddled with a blue glass vial, rolling it between his palms.

"John," he said, looking up. "Good to see you." He had discarded his eye patch. His right eye was swollen shut, the area around it black and purple.

John stepped toward him, his hand reaching out to hold Sherlock's cheek, his breath coming fast, as he used his thumb to touch the border of the bruise. Sherlock leaned into the touch, his good eye closing.

"What did you do?" John asked, eyeing the vial in Sherlock's hand. There were other items on the table, among the clutter: brown and clear vials, a spoon sitting to one side, two liquor bottles, a pitcher of water, and a small bowl filled with what looked like ordinary table sugar.

"Just what I told you," Sherlock said, pulling back. "I put on a show. Did you like it? The part that you saw?"

"I was meant to, wasn't I?" John said, his voice husky.

Sherlock blinked up at him. "You were."

It was everything John had thought, then, an elaborate dance meant to pick him open like a lock, the whole mechanism falling into place to put him here, now, totally at Sherlock's mercy. Sherlock had to know he'd set him on fire. John ran the palm of his hand over Sherlock's shoulder, and pushed his fingers into the curls at the nape of Sherlock's neck. Sherlock's hair was damp and soft. John rubbed the base of Sherlock's skull with his thumb.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He'd been so focused on Sherlock, that he hadn't noticed the other man, the big name he couldn't place. The man shifted now, coming to life on the sofa in the corner of the dimly lit room.

"Oh," John said.

The man was a picture, the tops of his thighs showing above stockings, boots discarded on the floor beneath him, the pale shine of the material of his shorts and vest highlighting every angle of his frame. He folded his legs and sat up in the corner of the couch, raised a glass of something purple, and took a sip.

"All right," the man said. "Is that him?"

Sherlock smiled. "Sometimes." He shot John a look, chewing on his lower lip, eyebrows raised. It would have brought John to his knees then and there, if not for the presence of the other man.

"I'm here now," John said. He deserved a bit of teasing, he supposed. He'd wavered. He'd questioned this. He couldn't imagine what he'd been thinking. It should have been a straight line, from first meeting, to everything.

"John, this is David." Something in Sherlock's tone made John look at him more closely, some unsteadiness. His face reddened visibly, even under the bright colours of his makeup. Sherlock's clear pale eye blinked and fixed on the middle distance, his swollen right eye inscrutable. John rested his hand on Sherlock's shoulder and squeezed, refusing to break contact, now that he'd made it.

"Hello," John said, schooling his voice. The man in the corner was undeniably lovely, as lovely as Sherlock, even more alien in his appearance. It was one thing, to see someone like him up on stage. Being in the same room, smaller quarters, an ordinary place, the sheer beauty of him hit John hard.

He'd anticipated being alone with Sherlock, especially after everything that had happened. Ache and want and need pulled everything inside him tighter, until he was practically vibrating with it. He was certain he was grinning, his face frozen in the default expression he used to cover discomfort.

Sherlock's hands were busy with the vials. He used an eyedropper to measure something from the brown vial into a glass with an inch of green liquid in it. He added a scant teaspoon of sugar, and stirred.

David watched them from the sofa, as if waiting to see what John would do. John wondered himself, as Sherlock held out the glass.

"What's this?" John asked, not touching it.

"MDMA," Sherlock said. "For you."

"For me?"

Sherlock focused on the glass as he swirled it. A sludge of sugar sat at the bottom, circulating under the green liquid. Some kind of liqueur. Crème de menthe? Absinthe?

"I don't—"

"You know its therapeutic benefits," Sherlock said. "You must."

"Sure." John had read about the trials in the sixties. MDMA was supposed to help people overcome traumatic memories, and to enhance the effects of talk therapy. Relatively harmless. Pleasurable. John licked his lips. He'd known one psych major in uni who swore by it as an aphrodisiac.

Sherlock held out the glass. "It's perfectly safe," he said, his gaze not meeting John's. "My own formula, a bit of a tweak on the usual. Not nearly as long lasting. I've calculated this dose for your weight. Should give you an intense but manageable high. It will dissipate in an hour to an hour and a half."

 John contemplated the glass. He'd imagined this. Wanted it, even. Wanted Sherlock, more, but he'd also wanted Sherlock to take him places, to draw him into his world. His hands shook. He was so wired. He needed alcohol, and a lot of it, but he knew that could take him beyond being mellow and relaxed, and into belligerence. This was no time to get piss drunk.

"You can trust him," David said, raising his glass. "I do. How old were you when you started making MDMA, Sherlock?"

"Fourteen. They were using it therapeutically in the hospital I stayed in. Never on me, of course. I was a minor. But then again, that didn't stop me from accessing it. There are always patients in a psych ward who palm their meds. Later, I wanted to repeat the experience. I found some ways to better it."

John took the glass from Sherlock's hand, then put it back down on the table. He had to think about it. "What about you?"

Sherlock picked up the blue vial. "This." He pushed aside a clutter of lipstick and mascara tubes, placed another glass in the centre of the table, and poured water from the pitcher. He measured some clear fluid from the vial into the glass.

"What is it?" John asked.

"Gamma-hydroxybutyrate. Don't worry, I've taken it loads of times."

"I've prescribed that as a sleep aid," John said.

Sherlock tilted his head and contemplated his own glass. "At this dosage, it will simply relax me. You, you've had alcohol, so it wouldn't be safe. Not, that is, if you want to remember anything that happens tonight." He looked up at John, his single open eye steady on John's for a moment too long. John couldn't read what he saw there. A request, maybe. Maybe need. Desire.

John looked from Sherlock, back to the man on the sofa. The drugs in question were completely legal and mild, as far as John understood them, even beneficial. He'd done riskier, more desperate things, with company he knew and trusted much less.

"Okay." He took the glass and held it up. "Cheers."

Sherlock took his own glass and clinked it against John's. "To putting on a good show." His voice was smooth and low-pitched, his good eye bright under a single raised eyebrow. John wondered what other injuries he was carrying. Scratches and bruised ribs, Mycroft had said.

They drank. 

The green liquor was indeed absinthe. The liquorice flavour hit John's tongue first, followed by something a little bit orangey, and a bitter aftertaste that briefly punched through the syrupy sweetness.

He frowned into the glass. A grainy residue stuck to the bottom and side. He wasn't really into sweet things. It was all right though. He wasn't drinking it for the taste.

John looked from David, still lounging on the sofa, back to Sherlock. "What now?"

"Come and sit," David said, his voice soft, higher-pitched than Sherlock's. He crossed his legs, and patted the spot beside him. "I've wanted to meet you."

"That's—yeah, that's nice," John said. "I'm nobody really."

The man smiled. "Not according to Sherlock."

John watched him for a moment, head tilted, a little unsteady. It wasn't the drink. It was the whole situation. He was exactly where he'd imagined he'd be, but everything was taking on a patina of strangeness. Sherlock didn't have friends, but he did. He had a whole community around him that John knew nothing about.

Sherlock's hand slipped over John's, his thumb running up the inside of John's wrist. "It's all right," he said. "Everything's permitted here. Isn't that what you want?"

John found himself gazing at Sherlock's fingers as they held his hand. All he wanted, all he ever wanted, was an open door, a welcome. And Sherlock was giving him that, or at least, that's how it seemed. Since the day they met, John had dreamed of this. Of Sherlock telling him he wanted him. And permission, yes, to do anything, to just be open to the possibilities.

Still, on the threshold, he hesitated. If he sat on that sofa, if he just allowed himself to be here, in this place, anything might happen. He didn't feel any threat, but he shook. It might be too much. 

Sherlock's fingers trembled as he turned John's hand over and cupped it.

"John," he said. Just his name, nothing more.

John stood, and breathed hard, and looked down at the grey carpet. And just like that, everything was okay, because Sherlock was as affected by this as John was. It wasn't nothing. It was a big deal, and Sherlock felt it just as much as John did.

"Okay," John murmured.

Crossing the room, leaving Sherlock sitting at the table, felt like leaving part of himself behind. He took a deep breath. He needed to take this slowly. He had no idea how he would be feeling once the MDMA kicked in, and there was a whole other person here.

David smiled as he watched John settle in beside him.

"What did you think of our set, John?"

"I liked it, yeah." A low tingling had begun at the base of his spine. "It was very good." A fluttering sensation started in his chest. Without trying to be too conspicuous about it, he slid his fingers up to his jaw. He pulse was fast, and hard. He wondered if he should worry about it.

The panic hit him all at once, his chest squeezing. There was no air. Sherlock turned his chair, and watched from across the room. He was too far away. John couldn't get to him.

"It's all right," David said. "Whatever's happening, it's fine." His voice was light and easy.

The words buzzed into John's skin, all over his arms and chest. His mind fluttered, panic surfacing again, as David continued to talk, murmuring the same nonsense words: _you're fine, everything is fine, it's good_. John couldn't focus on the words, his own thoughts overriding them. _I'm dying_ , he thought. _Here I go_. He inhaled deeply. David's voice vibrated on his skin, sinking in, making its way directly into his central nervous system, where it did little good.

Sherlock spoke from across the room. "It takes some time, John, to adjust."

Sherlock's voice travelled right to John's groin, settling there, then raced up his spine and shot straight into his brain, killing him, surely killing him.

He was breathing hard now. David took his hand, and held it pressed between his. David's hands were enormous compared to John's, dry and cool. The touch was good, anchoring him. Still, he wished it was Sherlock. Dimly, he wondered if it shouldn't really just be the two of them alone for this. Suspicion of the situation lurked at the back of his mind, but it was buried in the roar in his ears. 

John looked up into David's face. It was close to his, a mild smile on his lips. David's eyeliner was streaked by sweat under his eyes, one of which had been injured at some point, the pupil blown and fixed, the iris coloured differently from the other one. Pirates wore a patch to cultivate their nightside eye, so they could always see if they had to go below decks, or into any dark place. John had read that in a book. David had a nightside eye all the time.

"I'm dying," John said.

"You're not," David told him. "It's transitional. Sherlock, how long do you think this will last?"

"Am I becoming a vampire?" John said. "I've read _Dracula_ you know. I know how this works."

David's laugh set sparks off all across John's scalp. "You didn't say he was funny," he said to Sherlock. "He's scared as hell, and he's making jokes."

Sherlock stood, and wobbled in the vast, unbridgeable space between the makeup table and the place where John sat. He was a beautiful mess, his makeup smeared, lipstick dragged across the side of his mouth, like it was the night they met. John wished things had been different, wished he had gone about things differently. He should at least have kissed Sherlock before he died. Now it was too late.

"He's a soldier," Sherlock said. He watched John, all kinds of emotion playing across his face. "He's unusually attracted to dangerous situations and people."

Tiny lights, in rainbow hues, flickered at the edges of Sherlock's face, highlighting his nose and cheekbones, dancing across the dark bruise of his eye. John closed his eyes against them: they were too much, too terrible. He'd heard patients talk about seeing things as they died. This must be what they meant.

He wondered what Mr. Sparrow had seen. His grief barked out of him in something that started as a cry, and trailed off into a laugh.

"There," David said. "It's shifting now."

The heavy weight John had borne in his chest since yesterday morning lifted so suddenly, he gasped. Fierce joy blossomed deep within him. A gorgeous noise hummed in the room—music. Someone had turned on a radio. Slade's _Far Far Away_ was playing. The music filled him to the skin with its shifting energies. The panic loosened, and he took in a deep breath.

"Oh my God," he said. A grin slid across his face, and he extracted his hand from David's. He stretched his arms luxuriantly. Every movement brought a fresh trickle of delight that ran through his bones. "What is that?"

"John," Sherlock said. He took a tentative step closer, words soft in his mouth, his lovely mouth. "That's you. That's all you."

Sherlock was too far away, his beauty too intense, unreachable. John held his hands out toward him, feeling childish, grasping for something he wanted, but not in any way that shamed him. His usual sense, that he should hide his desire, slipped into the background, as trails of warmth and comfort moved up and down his back. 

David was touching him, soothing him. John's eyelids fluttered. The touch was good, wholesome and kind, and Sherlock was watching, wavering on his feet like a drunk, a smile on his lips.

 _Everything's permitted here_. That was what Sherlock said, that was what his smile said, that was what John's blood said, and that was what the hand on John's back said. _Everything's permitted_.

He wanted to stand, but he was glued to the couch by the fingers trailing up and down his spine. What they needed was a compromise.

"Come here," he said to Sherlock. "Come here. Come here." It turned into a mantra, the words he'd wanted to say when Sherlock came to his bedsit that day, the words he'd always wanted to say, from that first moment in the alley. Sherlock been untouchable then, untouched, and John had thought that was the way it had to be.

He'd done some things (running away, like a vexed child) that weren't good (leaving Mr. Sparrow to die at the hands of that killer).

All of that was here in this room, all of it accepted and forgiven. And there was a hand under John's shirt, running up the bare skin of his back, lifting the cotton up over his head and pulling it from his arms, freeing him to stand.

Sherlock wavered on his feet, waiting for John to bring him back to life. He breathed a little faster as John approached.

"Come here," John chanted, as he walked toward Sherlock. "Come here, come here." It was a low whisper, then a growl, then a throaty husk of language that ceased to have meaning. John crossed the room in four steps and finally, finally his hands met Sherlock's shoulders and he gripped him, whip thin but muscular through the material of his shirt. He ran his palms up Sherlock's neck to his face, rough skin against the firmness of those cheekbones, smeared with makeup, blended by sweat, flushed with the primal heat of all of them together in this room.

Sherlock's breath huffed out of him as he whispered, husky and sweet, "Is this what you want?"

Through the skin of his back, John felt the other man in the room. He looked over his shoulder and David was there, his top open, rubbing his hand across his chest and stomach. He'd lain down on the sofa and was watching them, his head propped on one arm.

"Should we wait?" John panted, hands moving over Sherlock's chest, the damp cotton of his shirt, the smooth skin of his throat. It wasn't what he'd pictured, getting high and having a whole other person here, but he was swiftly moving beyond caring. The room was a temple, the air they breathed, holy. Touching Sherlock was all he wanted, and he was doing that now, their mouths close, their breath mingling, and he didn't know if he could pull himself away.

Sherlock's good eye was watching him closely, his brows lifted. "It's better if he's here," he said. "This time, I just, John, I'm—"

John leaned into Sherlock, breathing in the warmth of him, his lips pressing against Sherlock's collarbone. Sherlock's words left John with a sense that something wasn't quite right, that there was a story behind them, one that John needed to know. There would be time for that. Later, there would be time.

Now, there was the taste of Sherlock in his mouth, salt sweat and firm skin. They would have all the time in the world, to talk and understand. The whole universe opened under John's tongue, benevolent and real and whole, and whatever it was, it didn't matter. However it played out, if Sherlock asked for it, John would grant it. If Sherlock permitted it, it was fine. If he needed it, it must happen.

"Yes. God, I don't know what else I could want."

Some tension that Sherlock had been holding left his body, and he sighed, the whole tone of the room shifting. John leaned into the warmth of Sherlock's arms, revelling in his touch, in the sensation of Sherlock's fingers in his hair, Sherlock's breath on his forehead. John lifted his face, and finally kissed him. 

Sherlock's lips were as soft as they looked, pliant under John's press and murmur and slide, opening to him, delicate and wet and tasting of lipstick and salt. John kissed, and Sherlock yielded under his touch, his entire body seeming to dissolve into John, blending with the bare skin of John's chest. Sherlock towered over him but crumbled beneath him at the same time, as John pushed him gently into the wall. He pressed them together, feeling Sherlock's whole body all at once, the sharp dart of his erection, the loose grip of his hands as they held John's elbows.

John moved his hands as they kissed, running them over Sherlock's hips, down to the small of his back. John's skin sang with the contact. His cock throbbed, pleasure scattered everywhere, through his bones and blood and out into the room, entwining the two of them in its embrace, moving out into the air, and the floor and walls and ceilings containing the air, and the man on the sofa behind them, good and patient, his approval of the whole situation shining out from him like warm sunlight.

Sherlock's touch was delicate on John's elbows, and that was exquisite, but John wanted the strength and sinew of Sherlock to join him, to be a part of him.

"Come on," John said, breathing kisses into Sherlock's open mouth. "Please. Please."

Sherlock sighed against his cheek, his breath shuddering.

"Tell me you feel this too," John said, his voice husky and soft. "Please, tell me it's not just me."

Sherlock's mouth was at his ear, his long firm fingers running through John's hair, rubbing his scalp, sending sharp pleasure skirling through John's brain and heart.

"It's not just you." Sherlock's voice shook John to his core, and exploded inside him as pure joy.

Now Sherlock's hands cupped John's face, and he kissed John fiercely, biting as much as kissing, tongue and teeth scraping John's mouth.

Sherlock warred with him, gripping his shoulders, as John's head dropped back to take the suck and bite of Sherlock's mouth on his neck.

Cool fingers slipped over John's ribs from behind, traced the bumps and thick skin of the scar on his shoulder, and set him to gasping again.

Sherlock pulled back and studied John's face, his single open eye running over each feature, each line and acne scar, tracing the line of sweat running down from John's hairline. Sherlock bent and kissed John's temple, came away licking his lips. He raised an eyebrow, then spun John where he stood, and John found himself facing David, looking into his eyes, his magic eyes, that toothy grin.

"May I?" David asked. The question was directed at both of them, John felt. John looked at Sherlock over his shoulder. Sherlock watched him, his face impassive.

"Yes," John said.

No other answer was possible. He felt it in each cell, which cried out for the most grand, most universal affirmation. No refusal could dwell here, in this room, in John's body. He accepted everything, from the tragedy of Mr. Sparrow's death, to the absolute certainty of the dangerous web that might, at this very moment, be closing in on them. Most of all, he accepted the two sets of hands on him, the mouth that bent to enclose a nipple, the other, most beloved mouth, that sucked on the place where his shoulder and neck met.

He knew he would never be capable of this if it weren't for the drug in his system. His usual mode was an eternal maybe, half hope, half disbelief, coloured by pessimism and a lifetime of denying himself. He was grateful. There were things in this world too beautiful to refuse.

He closed his eyes and felt his body pulled against Sherlock's, supporting him as David opened his flies, and slid a hand down into his pants.

John gasped and moaned, writhing against Sherlock, arms reaching up and back to grasp at Sherlock's neck and shoulders. The cotton of Sherlock's t-shirt rubbed against the skin of John's back, delighting him. David pressed into him, chest to chest, gripping John's cock and kissing him on the mouth now, the heat of him different from Sherlock, his tongue sliding, slick and skilled and confident, into John's mouth, tasting and then withdrawing.

John was helpless to do or say anything with Sherlock's hand pushing down into his pants to join David's, Sherlock's cock pressing into his hip.

The quiet pulse of the music playing in the background moved through him, an undulating wave that set him squirming as David left them, a smile playing across his lips. He traipsed across the room, hips swinging, pulling off his clothes as he went. The vest with the feathered collar fell to the floor, revealing the pale expanse of his sinewy back. He undid the skin tight shorts, and they fell too, as he stepped out of them in one smooth motion. He left the stockings on as he sprawled on the sofa, watching John and Sherlock with a grin as Sherlock's hand moved slowly along the length of John's cock, teasing rills of pleasure from him.

A distant part of John's mind was aware that this was the kinkiest thing he'd ever done. He'd had men in all kinds of public places, and had a girlfriend once who liked to be spanked, but that was nothing to two men at once, and these two men, of all men. Somewhere in the background he was struggling with the idea of his body, of who he was. He knew he should feel self-conscious, with David's eyes on him as Sherlock got him harder and harder, but it felt too good. It felt too right.

Suddenly he wanted more, wanted to feel Sherlock's skin against his. He drew Sherlock's hand out of his jeans and turned, running his hands over Sherlock's chest, trying to touch every part of him he could, and finally pushing his fingers into his hair, all those dark curls tangling. He pulled Sherlock down to kiss him again, Sherlock's mouth soft and yielding, tasting like pure promise, slow moving and more intimate than David's kiss.

Something warm and dark opened in John's chest, delicious liquid heat bursting through him as he lifted the hem of Sherlock's shirt. Sherlock pulled back from his kiss, watched him with his single open eye, blinking at John like a wary animal.

"It's all right," John said.

A smile twitched at the corner of Sherlock's mouth, and he lifted his arms. John pulled the shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor.

John had to have his hands all over Sherlock, skin to skin, everywhere. Looking at Sherlock, tracing the lines of his muscles, the taut planes of his belly, even the dark bruises across his ribs on the left side, sent trickles of cool delight through John's veins, soothing any fears he'd felt about whether this could happen, any concerns he'd had about whether he was worthy. This went beyond worthiness. Everything they did now was beyond reproach.

His hands drifted to Sherlock's jeans, traced inside the top, and Sherlock bent his head to watch as John undid them, the tight fabric folding and buckling as John pushed them down, taking Sherlock's pants as well.

"God," John said, as Sherlock's cock sprang free, hard and pointing straight at him. He bent to push the jeans further down, then dropped to his knees. He kissed the smooth skin at the top of Sherlock's thigh, then traced a line with the tip of his tongue, toward the centre.

John ran his lips over the head of Sherlock's cock, tasting bitter salt.

"John," Sherlock said.

The crown of John's head opened like a flower as he heard his name and felt the hint of Sherlock's fluids sliding on his tongue. He pushed Sherlock's jeans down to his ankles. Sherlock put his hand on John's good shoulder and stepped out of them, wobbling on his feet.

John tongued the underside of Sherlock's cock, loving how hard and hot it was. He moved to take it into his mouth, but Sherlock reached under John's arm to pull him back to his feet.

John would deny nothing, of that he was certain. He stood, even though he would have given anything to have Sherlock sliding into the back of his throat, to hear his own name dissolve in delicious moans. He pulled Sherlock close to him again, touching his face, running his fingers through his hair.

They were both sweating, goosebumps prickling across John's skin, despite the warmth of the room. 

"John," Sherlock said. "John, I want you. I don't know if I—I want to be okay. I want this to be okay." Sherlock's voice was insistent.

"Hush," John said. "It is. It's good. You're all right. It's okay." He kissed Sherlock's mouth, over and over, fierce joy springing up inside him.

This man. This man he loved was like a lion. They were indomitable, together. Beneath his hands, Sherlock moved, meeting his touch with warm skin.

They kissed, slowly, more tentative now. It felt like a step backwards, and that was fine too.

David rose from the sofa and approached them, his steps soft. 

"What we talked about," he said, moving behind Sherlock, and kissing him on the shoulder, the neck. He moved between them, making a circle of the three of them. He turned Sherlock toward him, his long white hand caressing Sherlock's throat, then he leaned in to kiss him, his tongue meeting Sherlock's open mouth.

John stepped back, frank jealousy clenching through him. Sherlock's hands traced the line of David's spine. Sherlock watched John, John realized with a sharp intake of breath, his good eye on him, brow furrowed, even as he gave all appearances of being totally absorbed in the kiss. His gaze thrilled John to the core.

When David reached for John, took his hand, even as he finished kissing Sherlock, John gasped at the touch. Tears sprang to his eyes because the grip was sure, and firm, something to hold him in place. David released Sherlock and stepped toward John, pulling him in by the hand and the hip, his fingers deftly pushing down John's jeans.

"Take these off, love," he murmured into John's ear. "He needs you."

John complied, the air hitting the surface of his legs and arse and cock like a whispered promise. David took his hand, leading him to the sofa and sitting him down on it, leaving Sherlock to stand in the middle of the room, his head canted to one side. The rough texture of the sofa scraped against John's back and legs.

"Here," David said, holding his hand out to Sherlock. "Come here." Sherlock didn't move, his brow furrowed.

John watched, completely rapt, as David moved back to Sherlock, stood behind him, and ran his hand over Sherlock's stomach, caressing, pressing into him. He leaned in and whispered something in Sherlock's ear. Sherlock's mouth, which John only now realized had been fixed in a pout, twitched into something like a smile. David whispered more, his lips brushing Sherlock's ear, his hands moving over Sherlock's chest, as they both watched John squirm with anticipation.

Sherlock nodded, his eye fixed on John, the skin around the bruised eye puffy and purple. David released him, and gave him a push toward the sofa.

Watching Sherlock walk toward him was one of the most beautiful things John had ever seen. His skin shone and lights sparked around his face, a golden glittering aura. Flashes of light jumped over his cheekbones and from the corners of his eyes, the side of his neck shimmering as the light from the lamp in the corner hit it.

Sherlock sat down beside John, making the sofa springs squeak. John moved closer, easing himself in, shivering at the skin to skin contact along their thighs, his belly pressing into Sherlock's side as he turned to kiss Sherlock's jaw line, and the side of his neck.

The whole surface of John's skin hummed anew as Sherlock smiled, really smiled at him, and leaned in to kiss him. John marvelled at himself. He was hard, had been since all this started, but there was no urgency to it. His whole body thrummed with desire, and a joy so pure and all-encompassing, it barely left room for the kind of raw need he usually felt. He could do this all night, and probably most of the next day, and not need to come. He was riding a wave that might never crest. The thought made him laugh.

Sherlock pulled back a little, watching him, wary. "It's nothing," John said. "It's just, I'm high. Whatever this is, I'm so high."

Sherlock placed his hand on John's shoulder. "I might have miscalculated your dose."

"I'd say you got it exactly right."

David approached them and kneeled on the floor between their feet. They both turned to him, and Sherlock offered to shift away from John. John held him, his hand firm on Sherlock's arm. Now that he had him here, he was never letting go, not until Sherlock understood what he wanted, everything he wanted, and how he felt.

"No," David said, seeming to share the same thought. He put a hand on each of them, rubbing circles against John's thigh, and a line up Sherlock's back. The movement transferred somehow into John's hands, which traced the line of Sherlock's arm, up to his neck, his ear.

David's hand was on John's back, pushing him toward Sherlock. Their bodies pressed together, the warm hand holding John in place, as he kissed Sherlock's cheek, and the corner of his mouth.

Something seemed to break in Sherlock, to finally release. Their lips met again, and Sherlock's mouth opened to John's. Sherlock moaned, all desperation and tongue and teeth as he moved over John, pushing him onto his back, and climbing on top of him, kissing him urgently.

John's hand moved to Sherlock's cock, slipping down between them before Sherlock closed the space completely. The crush of Sherlock's body pressed the air from John's lungs, and drove him into the cushions. The sofa was sprung, too yielding, the whole structure threatening to collapse, to John's delight.

The feeling of falling wouldn't stop. It wasn't just the creaking springs beneath him, one of which dug into his back, but the whole structure of reality: the building, the molecules that made up the world as they knew it. John's arm was trapped between them, his hand on the velvet smooth skin of Sherlock's erection, his knuckles scraping his own aching cock. He could die from this, he thought, from Sherlock lying on top of him, their bodies aligned, everything aligned.

David moved away from them, leaning back on the seedy carpet, then lying down on his side as he watched them. Sherlock sucked the side of John's neck. John opened his mouth to ask a question, but only managed to moan, everything pouring out of him on that wave of sound, and it was love, he realized again, not just fascination, not just a crush or excitement. His love for Sherlock would always be a revelation, birthed anew each moment. This was his real fate, not war and darkness.

"That's good. That's so good," David said. John couldn't help turning toward the sound, as Sherlock's tongue worked the side of his neck. David wore an amused smile as he took his cock in his own hand, stroking himself languorously.

Sherlock worked his way lower, moving down John's body, running his lips across John's chest, to his belly, then sinking his mouth down over the tip of John's cock, sliding over him, tonguing him as he took him in. John's eyes closed as lights exploded in his vision. He thrust his hips upward, helplessly seeking more of the warm wet space of Sherlock's mouth.

His whole body was bright. He was made of blinding white light, throbbing and pulsing to the undulating rhythm of Sherlock's lips and tongue. He surged and thrust as Sherlock teased up and down his length, drawing him closer and closer to the edge. John blended into Sherlock, all shifting sensations, his whole being concentrated in that mouth, between those lips, offering himself over and over to be swallowed whole.

It was so intense he thought he would either come immediately, or not at all. His body trembled on the verge of being completely overwhelmed by sensation, and unable to make up its mind. That fear soon faded, as Sherlock picked up speed.

"Christ," John moaned, his hand shaking as he pushed it into Sherlock's damp curls. He sat up, propped on one elbow, watching Sherlock's lips slide along the length of him, his hand curled around the base of John's cock, long fingers squeezing him.

Sherlock glowed, lights of all colours playing along the planes of his body, sparkling in his hair. He moaned along with John, shifted his weight, and slid an arm under the small of John's back. John gasped and threw his head back against the arm of the sofa as Sherlock held him, lifting him, drawing him into his throat, the softness of Sherlock wet and squeezing around him. A hot buzzing sound grew loud in John's ears. He shouted, suspended for a perilous moment between the scratch of the sofa and the soft warm wetness that he never wanted to stop. Sherlock swallowed and sucked, his mouth firm around John, and the entire world tilted, pouring John out, hot and bursting as he came with another shout, emptying into Sherlock's throat again and again, his entire body caught and opened.

He gasped as he came down, his skin on fire, sweat pouring everywhere, trembling and more finished than he'd ever been. He opened his eyes just in time to watch David cry out and come into his own fist, his release streaking out over the carpet.

Sherlock pushed himself back and away from John, leaning into the far end of the sofa, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and looking down at the space between them. He folded his long legs beneath him. John watched him through half-lidded eyes, the trailing ribbons of his orgasm still moving in his limbs. The ghost of the half-smile Sherlock wore earlier still played on his lips, across the corner of his mouth, streaked with smeared lipstick and John's come.

John wanted to ask. _Is something wrong?_ The drug still ran in his veins, he was sure of it. He knew because of the spaciousness he felt, inside and out. There was room for him to feel his heart bursting with love for this man who folded himself away from him. Room for the man who lay sprawled on the floor, watching them. Room for all of that, and room for whatever fine strain of sadness ran through everyone and everything. Room for hesitation, and understanding too.

"Come back," he said.

Sherlock shifted his gaze, lifting it as far as John's chest, but no further.

David rolled to his knees and crawled over to the sofa. He pulled Sherlock down toward him, tugging on his elbow, and spoke quietly to him again.

Sherlock watched John as David spoke, then shook his head. "I don't think so," he said.

"Watch," David replied.

David climbed onto the arm of the sofa, pushing Sherlock forward until he shifted toward John. John sat up and watched as Sherlock reluctantly moved again, sliding down against David's legs, and finally settling between them, his back pressed to David's chest. The jealousy John had felt earlier pinged into life again. He smiled despite it.

This deal—sharing Sherlock—might be harder on him than he'd thought. But it was Sherlock's choice, Sherlock's way of being in the world, and he couldn't judge. He would go through any kind of hell for this man. He would do whatever Sherlock wanted, whatever he needed.

Sherlock's feet came to rest between John's. John reached forward, rubbing his hand up the length of Sherlock's shin, skimmed over his knee, and up his inner thigh.

David whispered in Sherlock's ear, a constant stream of soothing words that sounded like nonsense. Sherlock closed his eyes and nodded, swallowed hard.

John bent down, kissing the inside of Sherlock's knee. Sherlock's cock was hard, the tip glistening. John trailed his lips along the inside of Sherlock's thigh, nipping at the tender flesh there, delighting at Sherlock's sharp inhalation, the tautness of his muscles, his nerves.

Overwhelmed by sudden emotion, his heart tender and open and full, he drew himself up the length of Sherlock's body, leaned over him, and kissed his lips. "It's all right," he murmured. "Everything is."

The words sat in his throat. _I love you._ He couldn't say them, not with David here, although he didn't think he would disapprove. He settled for kissing Sherlock's throat instead.

John caught David's whispered words. "You're here. You're here in this room. Just you. It's just you. You are yourself. You're here."

John placed his hand on Sherlock's cock, his mind buzzing with David's speech, the low murmur with no possible explanation John could imagine. Why Sherlock would need those words, why now, under these circumstances, remained a mystery. It stung him, the fact that Sherlock hadn't trusted him enough to tell him, hadn't believed in him enough to explain.

He hoped that someday, Sherlock might be willing to settle for just him.

He was starting to come down. Just like Sherlock had said, the fairy enchantment of the drug had peaked and was now fading, much faster than MDMA was supposed to. John's breath shuddered as Sherlock moaned and thrust himself into John's hand.

John closed his eyes and listened to the three of them. David's murmur, low and sweet. Sherlock's ragged breathing, thick with desperation, perhaps of more than one kind. His own breath, just shy of a sob. His hand fumbled on Sherlock's cock, losing its rhythm. He'd lost it. He was losing it all.

"Don't stop." Sherlock's voice pierced through his sorrow, a hungry demand.

John nodded, leaning down to kiss Sherlock's mouth, pouring all the passion and all the sorrow he felt into Sherlock, closing his hand around Sherlock again.

Sherlock's erection hadn't abated in the slightest. He moaned, his breath ragged, as John moved his hand in firm strokes. He hoped fervently that whatever Sherlock had taken, it would allow him to orgasm. He'd waited so long already. Whatever Sherlock needed him to prove, whatever Sherlock needed him to say, he would prove it. He would say it.

"You're here," John murmured against Sherlock's lips, his voice thick with emotion. "You're mine." It was a wish more than a truth. A promise, if he had anything to say about it. He kissed his way down Sherlock's throat and chest.

David put his hand on the back of John's head, running his fingertips through John's hair, recalling the skirls of sensation that had played across his skin just a short while ago. He seemed to want everything for them. He definitely knew more than John could understand. 

"Do you know," John whispered, his voice a husk of itself, "I've wanted this since the moment I first met you." He had to believe it was the right thing to say. He meant every word.

The purple bruise of Sherlock's right eye met his gaze. The left eye was hooded, lashes fluttering, as Sherlock watched him. John worked his hand on Sherlock's cock, slowly. He wanted, more than anything, for Sherlock to feel good, to have this, the simple pleasure of sex, the more complicated pleasure of warm words, spoken by someone who loved him.

"Since you saw me perform."

"No," John said. He kissed lower, tongue dipping into Sherlock's navel. "Well I mean, yes. It was like you saw me and knew me." He looked up again. David had closed his eyes, and fallen silent. The expression on his face was transcendent, his smile blissful. "It was the alley. You talked to me, and you were so sharp, and I didn't think I deserved to be anywhere near you. The things you say."

He kissed lower still, hand moving on Sherlock's cock. "So please. Whatever you're thinking, whatever is behind all this, just know I—I want you."

There was silence, then, only the sound of John shifting on the sofa to move lower, the squeak of the springs as his knees pressed into the rough tweedy material, the sound of skin on skin as he settled himself between the two sets of long, slender legs. Sherlock's face was tilted up at the ceiling, his good eye closed.

"Please, John. Please." 

John took his time, closing his mouth around the velvet tip, sucking lightly as he pressed his tongue against Sherlock's head, and slid it in small increments, left to right. Sherlock cried out as if he'd been stung, arching up, moving deeper into John's mouth, and then pulling away. John chuckled, looking up under his lashes. Sherlock had covered his face with his forearm, a proper swoon, framed by David's arms. Gorgeous.

This was all so strange, but it could still be good.

John slowed the movement of his tongue, eased the pressure of his mouth, and just stayed where he was, waiting until Sherlock's breath softened and his hips relaxed again. Then gently, he increased the pressure, slowly slipped his mouth down, until he'd taken in everything he could. He closed his eyes, focusing on the velvet softness of the foreskin sliding against the marble hardness beneath it, looped his fingers around the lower part of the shaft, and just held, stroked, and held, sucked and tongued until Sherlock's breath stuttered out in tiny gasps, small revelations, each one: "Ah. Ah. Ah."

John moved more quickly, applying more pressure with his tongue and sliding it over the tip of Sherlock's cock more lavishly. Sherlock moaned and canted his hips up. John relaxed his throat, unable to suppress the moan that passed his lips as Sherlock fought to contain his thrusts, squirming under him, held by David's arms around his chest. David had taken up his mantra again. John couldn't hear the words, but he imagined them to be the same: _You're here. You are yourself. Just you._  

Sherlock's breathy sounds turned into a low groan, and he bucked, his cock thrusting into John's mouth, once, twice, and he was coming, his release pumping lavishly over John's tongue. John swallowed, trying his best to take as much as he could, and letting the rest run down Sherlock's cock, mixed with John's saliva, messy, but so good, so real.

John wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and listened to the sound of Sherlock's breathing as it slowed, as he sighed. John pushed himself to his knees, his whole body stiff. His jaw was sore. He ran his palm over Sherlock's knee, and over David's. He was deeply confused, unsure about what would happen next, but he couldn't feel absolutely terrible about it, not when he'd taken Sherlock into his mouth. Not when he'd finally tasted him.

David moved out from under Sherlock, leaving him boneless and debauched on the sofa, arm still covering his eyes. He went to the corner of the room and picked up a bag from the floor. He rummaged in it, pulled out a set of street clothes, just regular trousers and a cotton button-up shirt. He dressed, watching the two of them.

Sherlock stirred, and drew his legs up, sitting up in the corner of the sofa. The posture reminded John again of that night in the bar, when it seemed like they had been so close to something, but Sherlock had shut down.

He reached for Sherlock, moving to sit closer, and ended up wrapping his hand around Sherlock's ankle. Sherlock studied his own knees.

"All right?" John whispered. "Sherlock?"

David cleared his throat. John looked up at him, not sure what to expect. David shook his head minutely as he buttoned his shirt and collected the pieces of his costume.

John scanned the room, eyes landing on the makeup table crowded with lipsticks and eye shadow and vials and bottles of booze. Was there some clue there? Mycroft had warned him about heroin, cocaine. 

"It's not the drugs," David said to John. "He knows what he's about."

"What is it?"

"Let him tell you." David opened the dressing room door. "It was good to meet you." He closed the door behind him, leaving the two of them alone.

Sherlock didn't meet his gaze. John sighed. The room shifted, becoming more itself, less holy, less magical. John wondered how far he would have to fall before he touched bottom.

"Damn it," he whispered. He moved closer, hazarding a hand on Sherlock's shoulder. This wouldn't do, this shutting down. He couldn't stand it, not now that they'd made love. It wasn't just getting off, no matter how weird the circumstances.

Unsure whether he could help, he stroked Sherlock's hair and tried talking. "Whatever it is, it's fine."

His jaw clenched. He fought with himself to relax it. He drew Sherlock into his arms. They were together now, however it had played out, and he wanted to be grateful for that.

Finally Sherlock stirred. "All right?" John said. "Sherlock, talk to me."

Sherlock pushed off the sofa, leaving the circle of John's arms. John watched helplessly as Sherlock moved across the room, collecting his clothes.

Sherlock dressed, much too fast for John's liking, the softness gone from his muscles.  He was all hard lines, quick movements.

John followed suit, collecting his pants and jeans from the floor, not liking the feeling in the room at all, not liking the fact that Sherlock wouldn't meet his gaze. He knew when he was being dismissed. He'd done the same thing to other blokes many times over. We're done, nice knowing you, goodnight, take care.

He cleared his throat. The come down was still rolling, still dropping him into a deep place where everything was gradually turning to shit. He wanted a drink. Or to go back in time, to half an hour ago, when it all seemed brilliant and good. Sherlock had made him feel that. It wasn't just the drug.

"What are you doing now?" John asked, cursing himself for having lost all the boldness that had been with him moments before.

"Home," Sherlock said. "I have to keep working the case." His good eye lingered over John's face. He dropped his gaze, and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets.

A hundred different sentences died on John's lips.

 _Stay with me_. _Let me stay with you. Wherever you're going, I'm going_.

He crossed the room and took Sherlock's hand. He was allowed this, now. He should be. "It's late."

Sherlock's grip was firm, almost too hard, as if he were clinging to John without meaning to.

"You could start the case in the morning."

God, he sounded pathetic, but his skin was aching for more touch. He'd never craved this before, not in this way. He wanted to be held. He wanted to be loved.

But everything was slipping away. Sherlock released John's hand and went to the makeup table, sat down, picked up a flannel, and scrubbed at his face.

All John could do was wait. He couldn't make himself open his mouth and ask for what he really wanted. _Come home with me, just to sleep. I don't want to be alone._ If Sherlock were so smart, he must understand exactly what John was trying to say. Christ. It wasn't fair.

Sherlock bent down over the makeup table and came up sniffing. John watched Sherlock's reflection in the mirror as Sherlock put the top back on one of his vials. Cocaine, most likely. John frowned at the implications.

"You've not come all the way down yet," Sherlock said, watching him in the mirror. "When you do, you'll need water, food, and sleep, in that order. Carbohydrates are best. Fruit. Something with sugar and vitamins. You won't want to sleep, and when you do, it will most likely be shallow, but you'll need to. You might feel low for a day or so. Rest."

"What about you? Don't you need to rest?" Mycroft's words rang through John's mind. _Please, don't leave him by himself_.

Sherlock turned to look at him, his gaze sharp. "The crisis isn't over, John. Don't you understand? I might have put James off the scent for now, but we're still in danger." He stood. His face was raw and pink where he'd rubbed the makeup away. Traces of it remained, across the lid of his good eye, the corner of his mouth. John longed to rub his thumb over Sherlock's lips.

"Tell me what to do. I'll do it," John said.

Sherlock watched him for a long moment, eye sharp and critical, eyebrows knitted together, as if assessing the situation. _Read me_ , John thought. _Please God, understand. I can't say it_.

"All right. I'll go with you to yours." He looked down at John's bare chest. "You might want to collect your shirt, though. Can't be seen half naked in the street."

"No." The word rushed out of John. Relief washed over him. He put his hand on Sherlock's shoulder, and kissed him on the cheek. "I wanted this," he said. "I want you to know that."

Sherlock watched him, his lips pressed together. "I've got some business at the front. Just need a quick look at the take for tonight," he said, stepping back. His hand hovered by the door.

John picked up his shirt from the floor, his stomach dropping. He heard the lie in Sherlock's voice as clearly as the words themselves. Oh. So that's how it was, then. Sherlock didn't intend to come with John. He was being ditched.

Sherlock's eye was sharp, but he waited, as if needing John's permission to leave.

John's t-shirt was inside out. He rearranged it. He couldn't hold Sherlock if he didn't want to stay. "Okay. I'll meet you out front in a moment."

After checking the room to make sure he hadn't left anything, John stopped at the loo. He did the best he could with a wash in the sink, scrubbing at the stale sweat on his face and neck, washing the worst of the stink off him with paper towels and bright pink chemical hand soap. His face in the mirror was rough, dark circles under his eyes. He was too pale. His jaw ached, as much from clenching it, as what he'd done with Sherlock.

He was so tired.

When he went up to the front of the bar, the place was empty. It was two a.m. He called Sherlock's name, but the dropping sensation in his gut told him everything he needed to know. Sherlock was gone.

He checked the back again, just in case, going into dressing rooms and the store room, then down into the basement where the bar stored beer kegs and cases of liquor. It was all empty. The front door locked itself when he went out onto the street. He checked the alley, walking the same loop around the bar he'd done the first night he was here. As he passed the bar's back door, he thought he heard voices and the echo of footsteps behind him, but there was nothing. Paranoia, he thought, or the after-effects of the drug.

Sherlock had disappeared as effectively as a ghost. John scrubbed at his face, feeling the promised exhaustion creeping up on him.

Defeated, utterly wrung out, John started the long trip home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here Today, Gone Tomorrow](https://youtu.be/998TNMqqnos)   
>  [Slade's Far Far Away](https://youtu.be/6gqCCAb8xbw)   
>  [Ziggy Stardust](https://youtu.be/dLYafk0Lui0)   
>  [Five Years](https://youtu.be/IWm03wYBTbM)


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

**No More Free Steps to Heaven**

_I really don't understand the situation_  
_And it's no game_

 

John sat in the chair in his bedsit, his eyes tracking the movements of the clouds outside, wave after wave of grey on grey. He stuck his hand out the open window, and allowed the thin rain to accumulate on his palm and wrist, until he could no longer stand the cold, damp feeling. He pulled his hand inside, and wiped it on his t-shirt. The cotton was soft, and warm from the heat of his body. The damp cloth stuck to his belly, making his skin crawl. He didn't have the mental clarity to find something else to wear, so he sat with the sensation—cloying, irritating—and stared at the rumpled bed opposite him, the ball of sheets against the wall, the pillow on the floor, evidence of the war he'd fought, and lost, all night long.

It was ten a.m. He'd been sitting in same spot since eight thirty, when he'd gotten back from a brief, nerve-wracking trip to the grocers and the bakery down the street. He'd spent the last hour and a half trying to recover well enough to stand, make breakfast, begin the day. Instead, he was drenched in anxiety, his mind moving in dull, horrifying loops, replaying the events of the night before.

He had made a terrible mistake. He was sure of that. He didn't know the precise shape of that mistake. Wouldn't know, until he could see Sherlock again.

If he saw Sherlock again.

The comedown from the drug had left him with a feeling of being burned out inside, dry and bereft of hope, empty of ideas. He couldn't work through the steps it would take to find Sherlock, to talk to him about what happened. He knew he didn't have it in him to ask the questions he desperately needed Sherlock to answer.

All he could do now was coach himself to move, talk himself through some semblance of a morning routine. He would probably feel better after a cuppa. Maybe some toast.

Every muscle was stiff, his whole body wracked, as he stood, and stretched. He felt a heaviness in his chest, panic stalking him from the periphery of the room, from somewhere deep inside the pit of his belly.

His limbs dragged as he walked into the loo. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror. There was only one person he wanted to look at, one person who could make it better.

The ache inside him, the longing, was worse, after what they'd done. He'd known it would be, but he'd never imagined it would feel this bad. Sherlock was in his blood, the memory of the taste of him too much. His sweet mouth, his sighs. The mystery of him.

He moved into the kitchen in a thick fog of nostalgia for the joy and exhilaration he'd felt only the night before. He put on the kettle, digging out a clean mug from the drying rack, remembering the texture of Sherlock's skin, the way Sherlock had trembled in his arms. Now that he'd held Sherlock on his tongue, and lain beneath him, he thought he would probably always want him.

He licked his parched lips, and rubbed his thumb over the chipped handle of the blue mug he held, a handmade relic from his past. He couldn't remember the name of the woman who'd given it to him. He couldn't remember her face, either, only her fingernails, the edges of them outlined with traces of potter's clay. 

He chewed the inside of his cheek, ricocheting back into a sense memory of Sherlock's hands on him. The naked expanse of his pale belly. The jut of his hips.

He put his hand over his eyes, screwing them shut against the bleak light, while he listened to the kettle boil.

It had seemed so good, so right, despite the anomalies, despite the strangeness of it all. The two of them should be here, together, curled around each other in the narrow bed, listening to the sound of the soft rain falling outside the window. Sherlock's absence was like a hungry ghost, following him from moment to moment, breathing cold against the whole surface of his skin, shaking him utterly.

John poured boiling water over a bag of Yorkshire Gold, and watched it turn rich red-brown against the mug's blue glaze. He peeled an orange and split the segments apart. His hand shook as he brought one to his mouth. He'd waited too long to eat.

Sherlock had abandoned him. No other word for it. John turned the potential reasons over in his mind as he ate the rest of the orange, wondering, as he had all night, why Sherlock would go to all that trouble—the set-up, the drugs, the seduction, the dressing room party—only to ditch John like some unwanted groupie.

He put bread in the toaster and leaned against the counter, scrubbing at his face. His mind turned through the possibilities, slowly picking through them, as if sorting through a dustbin for something that wasn't too bad, not too rotten.

All he came up with were weak denials: Sherlock hadn't used him. Sherlock hadn't meant to hurt him. Sherlock had a plan, he must, something that meant he had to spare John the truth. It wasn't that he didn't care. John was important. He must be.

His breath punched out of him. "Oh, Christ."

Sherlock's breathless baritone. _Is this what you want?_  

Obviously it had been. It had and it hadn't. He would have taken anything.

And John had answered so enthusiastically, said no to nothing, wanted everything, allowed it all to take him over. He couldn't imagine why Sherlock had involved a whole other person, but there had seemed to be something in it for Sherlock, some comfort he took in David being there.

Did he need help that way? Did he need help to be with John?

Maybe the answer was as simple as what Sherlock had said to him in Postman's Park: he was putting on a show, and somehow, John was part of it. Somehow, James Moriarty would be looking for signs that Sherlock was under his thumb again, and somehow, that meant sleeping with John.

The toaster popped, the sound hitting him like a gunshot, making him jump. His whole body jangled.

He fought the urge to smash every dish in the drying rack. Instead, he stared at the steam rising from the tea mug, watching it disappear into the heavy air.

Maybe he and Sherlock weren't anything like what John had imagined. Maybe they hadn't been anything at all.

He staggered over to his bed, and sat down hard.

It was over. It had to be. The strangeness of it, the terrible intimacy, facilitated, filtered through the drugs, and David, and the heightened awareness of the whole scene. It had been beautiful, but it was clearly the closing note of a one-act play. John had unwittingly played his part, and now that part was done.

He folded his arms across his chest, digging his fingers into his own skin. The bed creaked under him as he shifted, exhaled heavily, and struggled to take another breath. He'd been a fool. That much was clear. He'd just accepted it all, like some tourist who didn't know the local customs, and, fumbling, ended up making a travesty of everything. He should have paid more attention, said no. Said—something.

He stood again, paced the room. He couldn't stay where he was, or he would end up peeling off his own skin.

He went back to the kitchen worktop, and stirred milk and sugar into his tea. He drank it in great gulps, his throat squeezing, stomach protesting. He forced down the toast, slathered with jam.

He started to feel a bit better, maybe. A little less shaken.

He decided to take a shower. He stripped off his t-shirt and stepped out of his jeans and pants as fast as he could, flinching against the sensation of cold, damp air hitting his skin. He stood, watching the water fall, for a long moment, before getting in, suddenly panicked by the sight of it running down the drain. He didn't imagine, so much as feel, that it would take him with it, dissolve him utterly. He wasn't a man, after all: he was a collection of nerves, crawling sensations, and terrible decisions.

Once he (slowly, gingerly) got under the warm stream, he let water run into his mouth and out again, let it pour down on the crown of his head. He stayed there, in the shower, until his fingertips began to pucker, and the fog of his sorrow started to clear.

He had misunderstood. He had allowed his desire to cloud his judgment. But he still hoped.  

By the time he turned off the water, he felt much better, cleaner inside and out.

Dried and dressed, he sat once again in his armchair, and ran his fingertips over the edge of the side table, watching the telephone, and wishing it would ring. A single call. One word, one invitation, was all it would take.

The phone, for its part, remained silent. John closed his eyes, thinking things through, turning the events of the night before over in his mind again.

Maybe it was for show. Maybe it was a performance, but the whole thing couldn't have been about being used and ditched. If it was just a game, then wouldn't John have been treated like more of a fuck toy? If anything, Sherlock had offered himself that way, acting like it was his obligation to put his mouth on John, and almost refusing the chance to come. David had said something, talked Sherlock into it, it seemed. He remembered them whispering, remembered Sherlock's reaction, almost embarrassed, overwhelmed, when John had reciprocated.

John had already guessed that Sherlock's history hadn't been the easiest. When Sherlock spoke about Moriarty, there were hints that the relationship had been sexual, maybe. It had definitely involved advantage taking.

Sherlock had seemed so fragile, so tentative, in John's arms, on the sofa. He'd reacted to being held, viscerally. There had been hesitation in his actions, reluctance to be kissed, as if it were something he wanted to play at, but couldn't quite manage.

Sherlock might never let him get that close again. He had no reason to allow John in. John had proved himself to be a gullible idiot, grasping at the first opportunity to take his clothes off.

"Damn it," he said aloud. His left hand cramped, spasming shut. He didn't try to stretch it. He deserved the pain, needed it, to push him forward.

There was only one way through all of this.

He had to talk to Sherlock, to try to sort it out.

Sherlock had said he'd be working the case. Maybe he was home at Baker Street. John should call. He should just call and find out what was going on, offer to help, make it clear that he had no agenda. He picked up the phone, and reached for the dial, then put it back down on the cradle, softly, although he wanted to slam it to the floor.

Somehow, he didn't have Sherlock's number.

He pulled the phone book out from under his side table, and flipped through it, unhopeful and angry at the very idea of having to look Sherlock up.

There was no Holmes S in the book. Of course there wasn't.

On the off chance that Sherlock had moved recently, and the listing hadn't been updated yet, John picked up the phone and dialed the operator. They didn't have a Holmes listed at 221B Baker Street.

He stood, and paced, and his eyes fell on the pair of jeans he'd worn last night, tossed over the end of his bed. He dug around in the pocket, and pulled out the card Mycroft had given him. His eye caught and dragged on the words Sherlock had written, chest clenching as he read _Dear John_ and _Yours, Sherlock_. He skimmed over _Disregard the ghoul delivering this_ , and flipped the card over.

Before he could second guess himself, he dialed Mycroft's number, holding the phone in his right hand, while his left spasmed against his thigh.

"Hello?" A woman's voice. He hadn't expected a woman.

"Mycroft Holmes, please."

"Who may I say is calling?"

"John Watson. It's—" He stopped himself from saying _urgent, important_. He couldn't tell Mycroft why. "Doctor John Watson."

"One moment."

A brief flutter of terrible on-hold music was followed by the sound of Mycroft's voice. "Doctor Watson."

"Hello." John stuttered, unsure what he should say next. "Look, I wonder if I could get Sherlock's number from you? I somehow misplaced it, and I want to get hold of him."

In the silence that followed, John wondered if he could have chosen words containing more innuendo.

"He isn't home."

John blinked at the wall on the other side of the room, across which a spider hurried.

"No?"

"No."

"Can you tell me where he is?"

A long pause followed. "Do you suppose I leave my brother entirely to his own devices? He's run to one of his boltholes, but he is not unwatched. It's best, generally speaking, to make him think he can slip away, when he so requires it. I'm sure you've noticed that the smallest thing will send him running."

"The smallest," John repeated, wondering what, precisely, Mycroft knew, and what he thought of John now.

"Fortunately, he is, for the time being, within easy reach."

"All right. Can you tell me where?"

"Why do you want to know? So you can rush to his side? Sort things out?"

"Yes."

"Doctor Watson, if I give you the address, he will understand that it's come from me. He might well be angry that I've shared this information with you, and if he is, we shall both have to bear the consequences. Understood?"

John's breath sighed out of him. He hadn't been aware that he was holding it. "Yes."

"If you upset him again, he will run again, and it will not be in anyone's best interest to enable you to follow. So please, John. Do not foul this up. If not for me, then for yourself. For Sherlock."

***

It was much later, by the time John managed to get himself together enough to make the trip to the address Mycroft gave him. His nerves burned as he ran down the steps of his building, and out onto the pavement. As his feet hit the concrete, he fought a wave of nausea.

He stopped, pressing the heel of his hand to his chest. His heart beat a staccato rhythm, then seemed to pause for an achingly long time, then resumed at a wild pace, as if he'd been running. He breathed through it, ignoring the stares of an older hippie, who looked at him with a mixture of concern and amusement.

He would drop dead, or everything would fall into sync of its own accord. Nothing would stop him from trying to get to Sherlock.

A harrowing tube ride later, he emerged at Victoria Station, and made a an eight minute walk to a posh neighbourhood. 44 Eaton Square was one of a row of grand houses marked by white ribbed pillars, standing opposite well-manicured gardens. At the sight of the lush green trees, John took the first real deep breath he'd managed since last night.

He didn't know what he'd expected. _Bolthole_ implied a seedy hotel where you rented rooms by the hour, some kind of squat, or a student residence where one of Sherlock's fans would be only too happy to put him up for a bit. And then there were the places Sherlock went to do research: he seemed to have connections at every path lab and mortuary in the city. Surely Mycroft didn't know about every last one.

A stately, terraced townhouse in Belgravia was, however, entirely unexpected. Even more surprising, it seemed to be in the midst of some kind of posh party. People were spilling out onto the street, chatting in groups of two and three. From somewhere inside, a bass line thumped.

As John moved toward the front door, a pair women in summer dresses, their hair in loose curls, gave him cool looks over the rims of cocktail glasses.

He was terribly underdressed, in his jeans, striped jumper, and blue blazer. Still, the front door was open. He could walk right in.

A familiar looking red-haired woman in a tuxedo stopped him on the threshold. "Invitation?" she said, then frowned. "Oh. It's you."

"John Watson." It came out weakly, as if he wasn't sure he was telling the truth. He looked her up and down. "You're—" he searched for the name. Irene Adler had said it, on the way out the door, at the bar, after Sherlock's rehearsal. "Kate. You're a dancer. We met a couple of days ago." All credit to Mycroft for being a tricky bastard: he could have mentioned that 44 Eaton Square was Irene's house.

Kate pressed her lips together and tilted her head back. Trying to decide what to do with him, maybe.

"I've come to see Sherlock," he said.

"Oh, I know. The question is, does he want to see you?"

"So he's here." He crossed his arms, waiting for her to tell him to get lost. He wouldn't be turned away. If she tried, he'd find his way round to the back garden, and climb in a window.

She sighed. "All right. Come in. Mingle if you must, but don't go far from the front room. If he wants to talk to you, I'll come find you. If he doesn't, then you'll have to leave."

"Okay. Fine." He wondered how good security was. He'd noticed a couple of bigger blokes mingling in the crowd outside, but they looked like partygoers.

"He'll certainly sneak away if he doesn't want to be found, and you press the issue," she said. "Really, let me do this the right way. It's only decent."

She stared him down, as if he were not decent at all. John's face flushed. He wondered how much she knew. Sherlock's life seemed to be an open secret, known to everyone but John.

"Okay. I'll wait."

"Get a drink. It might be a while." Kate disappeared down a long corridor that led to the back of the house.

John pushed past the small group of people standing in the front hallway. In the large room Kate had indicated, through a set of double doors, twenty or thirty people mingled and talked. Their collective chatter, raised to compete with the music, scrambled John's senses. The room pitched like a boat on the ocean, then righted itself. The drug, or its aftermath, was still with him. Sherlock, and his aftermath.

A couple of women in shimmery dresses moved through the room with drinks on trays. One of them approached him as he hovered in the doorway.

"I have a gin and tonic here, unclaimed, or I can get you something else," she said, smiling at him suggestively. "This was just mixed. It seems to be the thing right now."

He took it, nodding. "Yeah, thanks."

A moment later, Irene Adler peeled herself out from between a tall, elegant woman in a white suit, and a shorter, rotund older man with a neatly trimmed moustache. She approached with all the grace of a leopard.

She wore a red sequined dress that left one shoulder bare, and a pair of red heels to match. The dress skimmed her body like a bathing suit.

"John Watson," she said, in a voice slightly too loud for comfort, slipping her arm through his. "This is a surprise," she added, in a tone that suggested it absolutely was not.

He walked with her, or rather, was walked by her, through a door that led to the kitchen, where more girls in shimmery dresses loaded trays with food and mixed drinks.

"Leave us," she said.

The girls moved on clicking heels, bearing trays, or simply walking away from their party tasks.

"I won't ask what happened. I guessed well enough from the state he was in, when he showed up here." Her words were measured and deliberate, her mouth quirked in a smile that looked more like a habit, than a sign of anything good. Her eyes swept down his body and back up again. "And you."

Before he could reply, she opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of something. "Put down that G and T. It's not what you need." She filled a shaker with ice and started pouring things into it, small volumes from too many bottles for him to track.

She put the top on the shaker and swirled it languidly in her right hand, watching him studiously. She took a highball glass from a tray and poured the drink into it, in a thin stream from a great height, not a drop spilled. She was so used to performing, she didn't realise she was doing it.

"Sherlock thinks a lot of you," she said. "I've never seen him like this before."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. You should know that there are a lot of people who have taken an interest in you, because he has. They're trying to figure you out. And before you tell me it's none of my business, or theirs, they don't care about your privacy. When you get involved with a public figure, there's no such thing." She handed him the drink.

He accepted, and sipped it. It was sweet, orange-ish, to match its colour, and not nearly as boozy as he'd been expecting. "And what about you? You can't hate me too much, or you wouldn't have allowed me in your home."

"Hate is a strong word," she said, studying him with eyes as large and steady as a cat's. "I have high hopes for Sherlock, but, given what he's up against, I wonder if you'll be the making of him, or his undoing. Just between you and me, I think you have the trappings of a proper hero. So do be heroic. And try to be smart."

He stared at her. She sounded like she was mocking him, but the quirk of her lips suggested something more delicate.

"Drink up," she said.

His head started to clear with the third sip. He probably needed the blood sugar boost.

"There," she said. "A bit of colour coming back into your cheeks."

"Thanks."

She stepped toward him, and from some hidden pocket produced a handkerchief of silvery material. It shimmered, like everything here seemed to do. "I don't know if you're aware, but you're awfully casually dressed for one of my parties."

"Not really my primary concern."

She folded the handkerchief into a neat square and tucked it into the front pocket of his jacket.

"There, quite formal now."

He couldn't make up his mind about her. She was a fairy godmother, and a trickster. "I'm supposed to go wait in the front room for Kate. She told me she would come get me. Once she has the chance to talk to Sherlock."

Irene looked at him askance. "I'll introduce you around. It might be a while. She's a busy girl. And he—well, all things in their time." She led him back through the kitchen door.

In the front room, she clapped her hands. "Everyone," she said, commanding instant attention. "This is John Watson, doctor, and friend of the family. Please make him welcome."

People stared at him for an uncomfortable moment, and then returned to their conversations and their drinks. He caught a couple of snide looks.

A tall, fair-haired man approached Irene, and took her by the arm, whispering something in her ear. She laughed, eyes on John all the while. She squeezed John's shoulder, even as she allowed herself to be pulled away. "Make yourself at home, then. I expect we'll see you again soon." Without another look, she retreated to a corner with her party guest.

John took another sip of his drink, trying not to stare at the doorway to the hall. He longed to see Sherlock standing there, come to take him away from all this. He imagined being drawn into the circle of Sherlock's arms. His need for touch was like a bruise, deep inside him.  

"Hello," a man said, startling him from his reverie.  

"Hi." John drained the remainder of the drink Irene had mixed him.

"Oh," the man said, eyebrows raising. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets nervous at these things."

John had a closer look at him. He was a slight person, only a bit taller than John, with dark hair combed carefully back from his forehead. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other, and grinned.

"You too," he said, eyes drifting down to John's chest.

"Pardon me?"

The man turned, showing John the front of his jacket. He wore a silver pocket square there, just like the one Irene had given John. "I've heard that Sherlock Holmes is here. Have you seen him?"

"Excuse me?" John tried to keep his voice even, but he couldn't understand the smallest part of this conversation, and he was becoming increasingly certain he didn't want to.

"John." Kate touched his arm. He'd been so occupied with the strange little man with the huge brown eyes, he hadn't seen her approach.

"All right?" he said.

"Yes." She walked toward the hallway without a further word.

"Best of luck," the man called out behind him. Somehow his voice dropped and changed, becoming something else entirely than the wheedling, uncertain thing it had been. John turned around to try to gauge the man's expression, but he was gone, melted, somehow, into the crowd, as if he were never there.

Kate stopped outside a sturdy wooden door. "Our library," she said. Her eyes drifted down to the silver handkerchief where it peeked out of John's shirt pocket.

He put his hand over it. "Irene."

She pursed her lips and knocked on the door, cracking it open.

"Sherlock?" she called out.

"Yes."

At the sound of Sherlock's voice, John felt as though he were turning inside out, every remaining ounce of hope and tenderness he had, pouring out into the space around him. He would have accepted ten times the strangeness and humiliation of this party, a hundred times the physical discomfort of coming off the drug Sherlock had given him, to be able to talk to him again. And now, here he was.

Kate's heels beat an efficient rhythm on the wooden floor of the hallway as she walked away. John pushed the door open the rest of the way, slowly. He didn't want to startle Sherlock. He didn't want to startle himself.

Sherlock was alone in the room, which was lined with bookshelves. He wore a pair of blue dress trousers and a long sleeved shirt. The top two buttons of the shirt were undone, revealing a triangle of skin that John longed to trace with his fingers. The shirt was printed with images of bright flowers—peonies, John thought.

Sherlock leaned over a large wooden table that dominated the centre of the room. An array of old photographs were spread out to his left; more photo albums, file folders, and file boxes were stacked to his right. A blue suit jacket hung over the back of a chair in the corner.

He didn't look up as John entered.

At the sight of Sherlock, John's entire body rallied from its stale, day-after state, and suddenly he was alive with possibility and need, an absolute need, to touch Sherlock, to kiss him. There were fairy tales lurking in the fibres of John's muscles, in his blood: stories of ravening thirst, endless hunger. Sherlock was fairy food, which you weren't supposed to taste, not unless you wanted to be bound forever.

He cleared his throat, but didn't speak. What could he say? Anything could make it all go wrong.

"John, your indecision is palpable. Are you coming all the way in? I don't have time for games right now."

John blinked, fighting back a burst of bitterness, fighting down the words that rose up in him. It was no game. Okay, then. He wouldn't treat it like one. He hadn't in the first place.

He wouldn't get anywhere by asking about last night; he was certain of that. Sherlock's posture was closed, his tone, all business. Fine. If today was for research, he would ask about research. A short time ago, he'd been happy that Sherlock had included him in that part of his life.

"What's all this?" His voice sounded too loud, against the muffled sounds of the party that barely filtered down the hall.

Sherlock let his hand rest on a stack of papers in front of him. "There's something here that I can't quite put together. It concerns Lee Sparrow. I could use your insight."

The words were precisely spoken, clear and deep, leaving no room for John to change the subject. At the same time, it wasn't a rejection. It wasn't the cold departure of the night before.

Maybe it was better this way. John stepped closer.

Sherlock chose that moment to raise his head and look at him. John watched Sherlock closely, taking in all the information he could, and fighting the urge to touch, to hold, to trace the line of Sherlock's lower lip with his thumb.

Sherlock's face was paler than usual, scrubbed clean of makeup and glitter, drawn. The swelling in his right eye had eased a bit, enough that he could open it a little, but the bruise had spread, and turned a darker, angrier purple. The left eye looked tired, the area underneath it, puffy and dark. He looked carefully arranged, in his nice clothes, but underneath, John could plainly see the same fragility and delicacy he'd sensed last night.   

He needed to be careful. They both did.

A trace of a smile moved over Sherlock's lips. His eyes ran down to John's chest, where they stopped, and caught. A sudden storm coloured his features: his brow furrowed, his mouth turning down in a line of disgust. Before John could ask—what, exactly, he didn't know—Sherlock turned away again, and angled his glance to make it look like he was examining the photos and papers once more.

He wasn't, though. He wasn't reading anything. He was blinking fast, staring at nothing, at the table. He ran his fingers over the high shine of the varnished wood.

John looked down at his shirt, to where the silver handkerchief peeked from his jacket pocket. He frowned at it. Garish, like something Sherlock would wear onstage. Not his usual style at all. "Yeah, doesn't go with my outfit, does it?" He plucked it out of his pocket, and let it drop to the table. "All right," he said, for lack of anything better to say. Best to focus on the evidence in front of them.

The photos lying spread across the table were remarkable, most of them black and white, some sepia-toned. Some of them appeared to be cast photos from a series of theatre productions: men and women in gauzy costumes, arranged in postures that suggested all kinds of lurid scenarios, like scenes from a particularly naughty play.  

"What are we looking at?" John asked. "You said you needed to know something about Lee Sparrow?"

Sherlock's hands gripped the edge of the table, his jaw clenched tight. Finally, he stood up straight, smoothed his shirt front, and turned toward John, although he didn't look at him. His eyes were locked on the silver handkerchief, where it sat on the edge of the table. He seemed to be breathing with difficulty. "I just need the answer to one question."

John's nerves were too raw, his head too full of longing, to understand what button he could possibly have pushed, when he'd only been here for a few moments, and he was the one who'd been tossed aside; he was the one who had questions. "What's that?"

"Mr. Sparrow's lover, Leo. Do you know how he died? Did Mr. Sparrow say anything about it, anything at all?"

"He did." John combed his memory for details. "It was sudden. 1959, if I understand the timing correctly. Stroke, they thought. Mr. Sparrow said he came home, and Leo had collapsed. He was already dead."

"No autopsy?"

"I don't think so. He didn't say, but I got the impression that there wasn't any point in exploring it. They assumed natural causes."

Sherlock nodded, and turned back to the table. He picked up a photograph, a black and white image of two men wearing thick fur coats. John leaned in to look at it. In the background, a line of robed men, their heads shaved, walked toward a squared-off doorway that appeared to lead to some kind of courtyard. In the distance, a mountain range loomed. One of the men in the foreground had his hood pushed back. His thick shock of dark hair and his warm smile were familiar.

"Is that Mr. Sparrow?"

"Yes." Sherlock handed the photograph to John.

The back of the photo had a caption: _L. Sparrow and friend, Lhasa, 1928_ , carefully printed in heavy pencil. John turned it over, and examined the picture again. It only took him a moment before he recognised the man standing beside Lee Sparrow: Leo. Of course it was Leo.

"They went to Tibet?"

"Yes."

"Do you know why?" John handed the photo back to Sherlock.

"I think so, yes. This is good. Very good."

John knew that Sherlock was talking about whatever puzzle piece he'd just put in place, but he couldn't help but feel Sherlock's words as praise meant for him. John slipped into a tentative sense that all might be right again, now that he was standing so close to Sherlock, feeling the warmth radiating from his skin. "Good? How is it good?" His voice was low, and rough.

Sherlock's hands shook as he rubbed his thumb along the edge of the photograph. His eyebrows lifted, and he spoke with a sense of wonder. "This is it, John."

"This is what?"

"The beginning of all of it. The real point of origin of the Great Game." He placed the photograph back on the table, gingerly. It sat atop the stacks of files, the photo albums stuffed with evidence of some elaborate history.

"The Great Game?" John shivered as he thought of Mr. Sparrow, finding Leo draped over the top of the stairs, lifeless. A sudden death. Unexpected.  "My God. You think Leo was murdered, don't you? That he was one of these induced suicides? But how is that possible? It was years ago."

"Indeed, it was. I've been a complete idiot. Haven't been looking far back enough. Haven't seen the full scope of it."

John felt as though he was trapped in a falling elevator. "I don't understand. How could a suicide be made to look like a stroke?"

Sherlock rubbed his shoulder through the fine dark cotton of his shirt. "I've long suspected that there's another level to the Game, John. Triggers so powerful that one need only say the word, and the body destroys itself. Not induced suicide, but murder, of the kind formerly performed exclusively by destroying angels."

"I can't believe it."

"I think you would find that the criminal classes have a talent for surprise, were you to spend more time investigating their work." Sherlock's gaze fell on the silver handkerchief, and he lost his soft, haunted expression. "But it's long past time for you to go."

John's laughter huffed out of him. "What do you mean? I've only just got here. And I want to understand. I want to know."

Sherlock's face reddened. "Pardon me, I haven't spoken plainly enough. Get out." He plucked at the edge of the silver handkerchief, and lifted it as if it were a dead mouse. "And take this with you."

John stared at the handkerchief, and stared at Sherlock, all his grand plans, his idea of coming here to smooth things over, erased with a single gesture. He crossed his arms. "I won't. Not until you give me some answers."

Sherlock tilted his head, a minor flutter of upset passing over his features: three rapid blinks of his good eye, a pressing of the lips. With slow deliberation, he placed the handkerchief down on the table. His fingers traced its edge. "Ah. You came here to make a statement. Confront me."

John's heart beat like it was trying punch through his chest.

There was nothing for it but to ask for truth. "I came here because—because I need to know. What was that about, Sherlock? Last night. I want to know what it all meant."

Sherlock turned back to the table, eyes set on the articles, the photographs.

"You wouldn't understand."

John felt his throat tighten. "Try me."

"I'm afraid it had to be done, for your own good, and mine."

John laughed bitterly. "Right. It was all part of a show."

"Yes. James had to believe that I—that I am as he wants me to be."

"So you said. What does that mean, exactly?"

"You've seen it all, John. You've even played your part. You're clever enough, in your way. What do you think?"

Sherlock looked at him then, his good eye tracing the line of John's face, lingering on his mouth.

John cleared his throat, the whole conversation sticking, making everything hitch. Last night, he might have allowed himself to be swept away. He might even have gone too far, but he was never just playing. He'd been himself, more himself than he'd been in years.

"I honestly don't know. I don't know where the line is for you, between how you've taught yourself to be and what you've done and who you are and—"

_And what he did to you_. John stopped before the words could rise to his lips. Whatever had happened with Moriarty was beyond Sherlock's control. Bringing it up would only be cruel.

"Well, let me enlighten you then. All my life, all my adult life, I've chosen to be one way or another. I've built a persona. If my time with James taught me one thing, it's that in order to survive, one has to be self-made. And that's what I am, and that's what last night was. A shell. A mask. Something I put on and take off at my convenience."

John closed his eyes. Sherlock was lying. He had to be.

"Let me tell you what I saw last night, Sherlock. I saw you, terrified to do or say anything that might be construed as intimacy with me. You were shaking. We both were. I was, Sherlock, I was shaken to my core by you and what we did together. I don't know why you thought you couldn't trust me with whatever it was you actually needed. I don't know why you had to bring David in, but I know this. You and me together, that was real. That was everything."

Sherlock watched him carefully, brow furrowed as if in pain, as if trying to find the lie in John's words. He studied the table, his hand resting next to the silver handkerchief. "Don't pretend you didn't like it, having him there. Anyone would jump at the chance."

John made himself speak slowly, deliberately. "I would have. I did, didn't I? Yeah, Sherlock, that's exactly what was going on. You could have walked out of there and I still would have had the story of a lifetime."

Sherlock frowned, his whole demeanour the very picture of sorrow. "You're the one who wore this today." His fingertips traced the edge of the handkerchief.

"What?"

Sherlock's left eye widened. "A bit obvious, isn't it?"

John shook his head, even as he felt the floor drop out from under him. "No."

Sherlock glared at him, outrage setting fresh fire to his words. "Do you really expect me to believe that someone who's spent as much time in bars as you have is somehow unaware of what this means?"

John studied the way the light reflected off the soft folds of the handkerchief. Of course he was aware of flagging. He'd never been one to announce his preferences, but he'd relied, from time to time, on bandanas worn by other men, especially when he was looking for something specific. He knew enough to keep an eye out for light blue. He'd always loved using his mouth, or having a mouth on him. But silver was a part of some obscure level of code that he'd never encountered before. It had never occurred to him that Irene might be setting him up somehow.

He thought of the conversation he'd had in the front room, with the strange little man who'd been all too eager to show off his own silver handkerchief: _I've heard Sherlock Holmes is here today._

"Oh my God. What does it mean?" 

Sherlock chewed his lower lip and looked toward the far wall of the library.

John felt his face flush. Irene knew, or had guessed, what had happened the night before. She knew enough, and she hated John for it, or wanted to take the piss. She'd said people were watching John. Maybe some of them were at the party. Maybe she'd wanted to alert them to what had gone on.

Sherlock believed that John had walked in here, having put on that handkerchief, as a kind of boast.

"Starfucker," he said. "That's the term, isn't it?"

He picked the handkerchief up, and rubbed it between his fingertips. It was slippery, ephemeral. "Not that I think you'll believe this, but I had no idea. Irene gave it to me when I got here."

Sherlock's eyebrows shot up as he raised his head to look at John, a sudden burst of humour moving over his face, before he looked down at the table again, as if unable to meet John's gaze, for an entirely different reason than moments before.

"Honestly, Sherlock, you don't think—" He stumbled on his next words. "It wasn't a conquest for me. Please. I couldn't stand it if you thought that I would go around advertising it like that."

"It would be easier, if it were true." Sherlock's mouth turned down, as if he tasted something bitter.

"No. You can't think that." John stumbled on his own thoughts. He was looking at a tragedy, at some unfolding truth he couldn't grasp.

"Do you see? It might as well be true, John. Because it can't be anything other than what it was last night. That's all there is, for me, with me. And it can't happen again."

John stared at him, a world of questions burning through him. All the beauty he'd held in the small space of his body, the night before, couldn't be wrong. And yet, if Sherlock didn't want to move forward, didn't want him, then it was finished.

He might as well say what he needed to say. He couldn't do any more damage.

"I'm tired, Sherlock. My skin is coming off, and I know it's because of what you gave me, because you gave it to me and then you left me. And I can't help but think that you wanted to hurt me, that you wanted to make it clear that you would rather talk to anyone else about what's really going on than me."

Sherlock's eyes were fixed on the table, a crease forming between his brows. He didn't say a word, so John kept going.

"But regardless of all that, last night was—" He closed his eyes. He couldn't look at Sherlock and say it. "Last night was extraordinary. You moved me, Sherlock. You made me feel things I've never felt, and it wasn't because of the drug, and it wasn't because of David, and it wasn't because you're a bloody big deal, although all of those things are incredible. It was because of you, who you are. I won't believe that it was a lie. It certainly wasn't for me."

John opened his eyes, and followed Sherlock's gaze down to the table. The faces of the dead and long forgotten stared up out of their photographs, their expressions frozen and earnest. They'd had lives, once. They'd had their dreams and passions, and now their time was over.

"He understands what it's like," Sherlock murmured.

"What? Who?"

"David."

"He understands what what's like? What does he understand, exactly?"

Sherlock's good eye blinked fast. "What it's like to perform. To lose yourself. You—you're just yourself, John. You wouldn't know."

John felt the rush of heat and adrenaline that always came when he was pushed into a corner. He spoke in quiet tones, through a grimace, the fake smile he could hold under the worst circumstances.

"I wouldn't know what it's like to feel one thing and have to be another? To know something is real and have to deny it?" He was growling now, the words pouring out of him in a raspy whisper. Dangerous. "You think I haven't felt things, and done things that I had to hide? You know I have. Let me ask you this, as a professional, as someone who pretends all the time. Have you ever thought about how it is, how hard it would be, to be so good at hiding what you really are, that no one knows you're acting? How dare you, Sherlock. Goddamn it."

He was shaking. He felt certain that the drug was mostly out of his system, but he could tell that his nerves were still not right.

Sherlock's face grew red, quiet frustration moving over his features, but he said nothing.

"I would have tried to understand," John ended up mumbling, under his breath, as his soul crumpled and he tipped into despair. "If you'd asked, I would have. I would have done anything to help."

Sherlock reached for the photograph of Lee Sparrow and Leo in Lhasa, and held it between his fingers. "This is all that matters now."

"The case."

"Yes, the case. I'm sorry, that's all there is."

The case. At least it was something practical, something Sherlock would share with him, even if he'd resolved not to share himself.

"Fine. Good." The words came hard. 

Sherlock stared at him.

John's skin burned, and he ached with the need for Sherlock to look after him, to touch him. Outside the window, a bird sang, the bright notes of its call an echo of the sounds of the party, and John let go of something hard and sharp, and his chest ached as if his heart was breaking. "How can I help?"

Last night was Sherlock's fault. John believed that. Sherlock had seduced him. He'd orchestrated the whole thing so that John would fall into the plan without even realising it, so that he wouldn't be able to resist. But the tenderness that John had felt from the beginning, that wasn't misplaced. He was still willing to stay. He didn't want to be anywhere else.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, mild shock passing over his features. "Well." He trailed into nothingness as he rubbed his upper arm through his shirt.

The air in the room seemed stale and full of dust. John felt as though it was collecting on his skin, coating him. Horrible pins and needles moved all up and down John's spine, as he remembered the black circle of Sherlock's ouroboros tattoo, remembered covering it with his hand as he gripped Sherlock's naked shoulder and kissed him. At the time, he'd hardly noticed the tattoo. It was as if it had faded from view, as if it couldn't exist in the enchanted space of Sherlock's dressing room. It surfaced now, as a foul memory, darkening the beautiful dream of the night before.

He had a sudden, terrible sense that he had missed the point of this entire exchange.

It _was_ all about the case. All of it, including everything that had happened between them. It would always come back to the Great Game, the game that was no game, the crumbling foundation at the core of London, the rot under the busy veneer of the city, and, likewise, Sherlock's own dark history, the hole at the heart of him, the reason why he couldn't seem to do anything the way that normal people did. John traced the connections, from the ouroboros that sat on Sherlock's shoulder, to the noose tightening around John's own neck, the snare that had already caught him, before he had the chance to decide if he wanted to be caught. It rankled. It held him in this room, by Sherlock's side, and it stopped him from doing what he wanted to do. Maybe it stopped Sherlock from doing what he wanted, too.

John understood the mistake he'd made now, the one big mistake, from the moment Sherlock told him about the Great Game. He'd imagined, somehow, that Sherlock's relationship with James Moriarty, whatever ideas Moriarty had planted in Sherlock's head, were peripheral to the case. Related, but tangentially so.

What if everything they were investigating—the murders disguised as suicides, the bombs planted in people's minds—was part of what had been done to Sherlock? What if Sherlock had a trigger all his own?

Sherlock was shuffling papers, his head bowed over the table. He'd hinted enough times that he was part of the Game, hadn't he? He'd acted erratically, as if trying to work his way free of something. John had seen it, but hadn't wanted to follow the evidence all the way through to the most logical, and devastating, conclusion. He studied Sherlock's dark curls, and wondered what terrible traps lay nested in his mind.

There was only one way through to the mystery at the heart of Sherlock Holmes, one way to solve the puzzle of the man John desperately wanted. Understand the case. Help him work it. Help him solve it.

"To make you understand," Sherlock said, as if continuing a sentence he hadn't managed to start out loud, "I need you take you the long way round." He pulled out a bundle of newspaper clippings, and started laying them out on the table. "Is that all right?" He didn't look at John as he asked the question. There was a new tension in his voice, a high strain.

"Of course," John said gently.

Sherlock paused, his face turned away, his back still hunched over the table. "This information, John, I haven't shared with anyone else, and I won't. It goes, like I said, to the very heart of everything I know about James Moriarty, and his plans."

John's posture shifted into military alertness, his chest tight. "Okay."

He looked at the newspaper articles Sherlock had laid out. Two, from the late 1800s, contained information about a Russian import-export company, looking for London investors. Three were about a touring circus troupe, bound for a cross-country tour of the United States, from Vladivostok. From the look of the last of the articles, the circus had planned a European tour, which was cancelled in late 1903, when one of their tents burned, killing several of their acrobats.

Sherlock spoke while John read. "Irene is an obsessive collector, mostly of tediously beautiful women, as you've no doubt observed. She's always been interested in this—" He gestured at the shelves all around them, stuffed full of cardboard file boxes and books. "It's a sort of archive of London theatre history. Anything pertaining to performance, she has stored here. Poorly indexed, for the most part. Fortunately I've spent more than my share of time in this room, mostly during her parties. Nothing so dull as people determined to have a good time."

John studied the articles carefully. "I'm sorry, what am I looking at? None of these seem to be about the theatre."

"Oh, but they are, after a fashion. The name. Look for the name."

John scanned the articles again. The same name came up in all of them. "Karkarov. So—a family? Who owned this company, and started a circus?"

"A family and a crime syndicate, well known in the nineteenth century, especially in Vladivostok. Interesting place, Vladivostok. Established in the late 1800s, far from the seats of Russian power, with a port on the Pacific—an ideal place for dodgy business ventures, if one were interested in that sort of thing. Michael Karkarov certainly was. He used the cover of this import-export company to establish contacts in the West. Later, this circus, run by Michael's sons Joseph and Leonin, followed. The circus was, apparently, spectacular to see. The reviews of their few performances are positively glowing. But, wherever they traveled, a trail of crime followed: the disappearance of certain expensive antiques; murders; an increase in black market activity. The circus, you see, was a front for the real business of the Karkarov family." He pointed at the last article. "It all ended with this fire. Convenient, that, except for the death of those acrobats."

"You think someone set the fire on purpose?"

"I think Leonin Karkarov had a vested interest in ending his career in the circus and escaping the family. The Karkarovs fell into obscurity after the circus was shut down. On his own, without his little brother, Josef Karkarov didn't have the business acumen to run a front. And Leonin, it seems, had career aspirations of his own." Sherlock pulled a final article out from another stack of papers, and handed it to John.

It was a clipping from the _Pall Mall Gazette_ , 1904. The title was, _From the Big Top to the Small Stage_ , and featured an interview with Leonin Karkarov, who had relocated to London, and taken a job working as a consultant for an unnamed illusionist, helping him, according to the article, _bring the mysteries of the Russian Czars to the world of London theatre_. The article included a photo of the man, who was, by now, familiar to John: Mr. Sparrow's Leo.

It was a formal portrait. Leo's expression was wary, his pale hair carefully brushed back from his brow. His beauty was obvious: he had a strong, masculine chin, and sharp eyes that seemed to watch the camera with intense awareness. In one hand, he clutched a hat and a cane, as if he were trying to put something between himself and the viewer. His other hand curled around the wrought iron back of the chair in which he sat.

"Working with a London illusionist. Hang on. Was that Mr. Sparrow? This is how they met, isn't it?"

"Very good, John."

John was struck by the picture of Leo, of how vulnerable he looked, how young and handsome. "Leonin, though. Mr. Sparrow called him Leonard."

"Anglicisation of names, common practice among immigrants, especially among those looking to hide their former identities."

Whatever had happened to take Leo and Mr. Sparrow from London to Lhasa and back again, whatever dangers they'd faced or scandals they'd caused, they'd been together, worked together. John placed the article down on the table, as Sherlock continued his story.

"After Leonin Karkarov moved to London, he stayed in the theatre for some years, working as a producer. After this article in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ , he ran some very successful shows, but later, in the 1920s, he disappeared from the public eye. Until you turned up with that photo of the two of them that Mr. Sparrow gave you, I could never find out what happened to him."

"And you think he was somehow programmed. Implanted with a trigger."

"Yes."

"But when? Who planted Leo's trigger?"

"Ah, that's where things get really interesting." Sherlock pulled a sheaf of papers from a file folder, and placed it on the table. The typewritten pages were in Russian. Large portions of the text were redacted, carefully inked out with heavy black marker. Held to the top page with a paper clip was a black and white photograph of a dour looking bearded man with craggy features, his pale hair combed back from his forehead, styled with pomade.

"Josef Karkarov. This document is one of several I stole from James's collection, before I left. The last time I left. It details early experiments in mesmerism, or, more accurately, mind control. I believe Josef started working on Leonin as part some sort of performance, an act for the circus, perhaps—hypnotism very popular with the public in the early twentieth century. But he ended up going much, much further. He gained quite a reputation among Russian government scientists. The reports concerning his work refer repeatedly to one subject, one man he worked on more than any others, although that man was never named in any official documents. Do you see? It was Leo. Leo, in whom he planted a trigger, the word that would mean his death."

John thought about Mr. Sparrow, loving a man whose mind housed the means to kill him. He studied Sherlock carefully. "His own brother."

"Indeed. Families, John. The most unaccountable things happen in them."

John thought of his own father, his petty cruelties, the sour look that had crossed his face when John tried to talk to him about anything that really mattered. "I suppose so. But you said Moriarty had these documents. Is this where he got the idea for the Game?"

"Undoubtedly. James often talked like he pulled his theories out of thin air, but all ideas come from somewhere."  

Sherlock folded his arms, and walked over to the window. He stared out into the garden.

"By the time I met James, Josef Karkarov was long dead. He passed in 1954, in Marseilles."

"1954? Five years before Leo died."

"Yes. I imagine Leo would have experienced some relief, knowing that the brother who had tormented him was gone. He probably thought he was safe."

"He wasn't, though. Someone still got to him."

Sherlock's hand rested on the window frame. "James kept those papers, and read them often. When I asked about them, he spoke about Josef in intimate terms, like he knew him personally. He denied it of course. His philosophy would never allow him to admit that he owed his methods to someone else. But I think he studied under Josef. And, once Josef was dead, as a sort of homage to his mentor, James completed Josef's work, the lifelong experiment Josef performed on his own brother."

"What?"

"The truth is, James was as subject to hero worship as any of us. He adored Josef Karkarov. And Josef was clearly a sadist, probably a psychopath. He wouldn't have wanted his work to go unnoticed." Sherlock turned from the window, to look at John. His voice was strained, his one good eye, wide open. "It would make sense, wouldn't it? Passing on a gift to your prized pupil? Wanting to show how powerful you were? Give someone who has learned from you a chance to feel that power for himself?"

"You think James Moriarty killed Leo?"

Sherlock's smile was faint. "I think he triggered the bomb that had been sitting in Leo's brain for six decades."

"Just like those kids in the polio ward."

Sherlock stepped closer, moving back to the table, to stand beside John. "Very much like them, although in many ways, Leo would have been more of a challenge. James didn't plant Leo's trigger, so he would have had to figure it out. And Leo was a full grown man, with a life. He had someone who loved him."

John had a sudden sense of the depth of the Game, of its roots in a long history of cruelty.

Sherlock returned to the table, and picked up the photograph of Mr. Sparrow and Leo in their fur coats, smiling for the camera in Lhasa. "John. If you—"

Something in the way Sherlock's speech wavered, the way his voice caught in his throat, grabbed John's attention, and all at once he was sailing over the edge of his own limits, hoping to find somewhere good and warm and safe to land.

"What is it?"

Sherlock blinked at the photograph. "If you loved someone, and you knew they had a problem, like a cancer, or a—I don't know, something that could kill them at any moment—"

"Yes?"

"Would you try to find something that would save them?"

"Yes. Of course. Anything."

A long silence spooled out between them. In it, John thought he sensed a new energy coming in.

Sherlock cleared his throat, and pulled another black and white photograph from the piles of documents spread out on the table.

The picture showed an angular man, smartly dressed, in a neat three piece suit, wild dark hair barely tamed. He stood on a stage framed by thick curtains. _Lee Sparrow, Somnambulism and Mentalism_ , read a large painted sign propped beside him. It was definitely Mr. Sparrow, albeit painted with stage makeup, and striking an exaggerated showman's pose, his back hunched in concentration, and his arms extended, crooked fingers pointing toward a woman in a chair on the other side of the stage.

She wasn't sitting in the chair so much as draped over it, her head tilted back in something that looked like a faint. Her arms dangled at her sides. She was costumed in a loose nightgown, her hair in a dark cloud over her shoulders.

_Tom Tom Club, 1924_ , the photo said on the back.

"Sleepwalking?" John asked. "That's what 'somnambulism' means. How does that translate into theatre?"

"It's another term for mesmerism," Sherlock replied. "Mr. Sparrow was an accomplished hypnotist in his own right."

John scanned a newspaper article Sherlock handed him, a review of one of Mr. Sparrow's shows. Among the enthusiastic descriptions of people lying on beds of nails and fire walking, there was one paragraph detailing how people who came to the show with phobias—fears of spiders, of heights—were invited to come onto the stage, where Mr. Sparrow would attempt to cure them. According to the article, his success rate was quite remarkable.

"Do you see?" Sherlock asked.

"He was trying to help people."

"Yes. I believe it was a lifelong project for him. Reprogram the mind, unbreak what has been broken." Sherlock picked up the photograph of Mr. Sparrow and Leo in Lhasa. "This came later. The Tom Tom Club was closed from 1928 to 1932. Lee Sparrow and Leo spent four years abroad."

"Why Lhasa?"

"There are certain Tibetan meditation techniques, certain methods of cultivating self-control, unique to that place. Perhaps they learned some secrets that helped them temper the trigger in Leo's mind. Perhaps they managed to disable it."

John wished, desperately, that he'd had more time to talk to Mr. Sparrow, before he died. "So this means there's a solution out there. There's a way to undo the programming?"

"Perhaps."

John allowed his heart to soar for a moment. There was hope. There was a way to work the problem, a way to help Sherlock. But hope was just as quickly replaced by doubt, as he thought of Leo, lying dead at the top of the stairs. "It didn't work though, did it? Leo's programming still killed him."

"But Mr. Sparrow tried," Sherlock said. "He went all that way. He really tried, John. And I think, he succeeded, until James cracked the code, until he found a way to reawaken the programming. Surely there were attempts on Leo's life before 1959. Josef wouldn't have been happy with the idea of Leo having an independent life, apart from him."

"It worked, then. Until 1959."

"Until 1959."

John thought of Mr. Sparrow, of the talks they'd had. His mind shuffled through images of steam rising from mugs of tea, the dusky orange of the worn vinyl chair in the corner of Mr. Sparrow's room, and the child-sized corpse under a sheet on a stretcher. "And they killed Mr. Sparrow too, in the end."

"That's right. We know that now, don't we? We know Mr. Sparrow had enough knowledge of the Game, through Leo and his grand nephew, to be considered dangerous to James and his plans for the future. He couldn't afford to wait for Mr. Sparrow to die."

John felt the full weight of the mistakes he'd made, the opportunities he'd missed, to make a real difference, to save Mr. Sparrow. "He was trying to tell me that something was about to happen, and I wasn't fast enough. I didn't see."

Sherlock watched John carefully. "He probably knew it would be too dangerous. And maybe he meant to say more, but he ran out of time. But—here's the important thing—the photograph, the things he told you about Leo, about his nephew—they were enough for me to put things together. You see? He was clever, your Mr. Sparrow. He made sure you had enough to go on, even if he didn't make it."

John's breath came heavily, his chest squeezing with a host of unnamed emotions. "I don't think I could have, though. So what good did it do, to hand the photograph to me? You're the one who figured it out." He'd never gotten the chance to tell Mr. Sparrow about Sherlock. One among many regrets.

Sherlock's voice was quiet, gentle. "You underestimate yourself, John." He paused, the  moment stretching between them, as the sounds of the party carried on in the background: the pulse of the bass, the low murmur of idle conversation. "Perhaps I have, too."

_Perhaps_ , John thought. He studied the table. "What's next? For the investigation?"

Sherlock's brow furrowed. When he spoke, he was sharp and bright, holding his hand out over the stacks of photographs and papers. "This is the moment I've been waiting for, the one clue I needed to get started. Now, thanks to you and Mr. Sparrow, I have the first puzzle piece, the first move in the Game. It starts with Leo Karkarov, and culminates with these strange deaths, the cases we've been tracking. It's all part of a message meant for me to decipher."

"You said there would be a pattern."

"That's right. A key code, an embedded solution. James is many things, but he's not interested in playing the Game all by himself. I just have to think, have to put it all together. Once I have the pattern, then I'll understand how it will play out, what James will do next, and how it will end." Sherlock looked at the table without seeing, as if he were lost in the puzzle. The longer he'd spoken, the dreamier his voice had become.

John's stomach lurched. In the café, when Sherlock had first told him about Moriarty, he'd explicitly said that the entire point of the investigation was to prevent him from hurting more people. Now, it seemed as though Sherlock was lost in the puzzle itself, interested only in understanding it. "Right," he said. "And once you have the pattern, you can stop him."

Sherlock blinked, and looked at John as if waking up from a dream. "Of course, John. We must stop him." He shook his head as if to clear it, and a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "There is one more thing I must do, before moving ahead with all of this."

"What's that?"

"I could use a partner. Someone with nerves of steel, a steady hand. A sharp mind, too. And one who isn't afraid of a bit of danger." Sherlock cheeks flushed as he spoke.

John indulged, for a moment, a fantasy of some other series of events leading to this moment, some other timeline that would allow him to kiss Sherlock full on the lips. "You've already asked me."

Sherlock's brow furrowed. "Oh. Wouldn't want to be presumptuous."

They'd gone around in circles, the two of them, moving through the same steps again and again. Enough. John had already said yes, would always say yes. He knew that now, even though he'd been hurt. "You asked me the second time we met, and you asked me after Great Ormond Street Hospital. You asked me in Postman's Park, before—" he hesitated. "I want to help. But Sherlock, I want to be included. No more tricks. No more games between us."

Sherlock's smile faded. "Would you believe me if I told you it was for your protection?"

"How's that?"

Sherlock bowed his head, and studied the photographs.

John turned to look out the window. Late roses bloomed in the garden, bright pink, their colour unreal against the thick greenery. "I don't know what to believe. Just—if you're asking me in, ask me, for real."

Sherlock hesitated for a long time, his fingers hovering over the table, lingering over Josef Karkarov's file. "I would be grateful for your help with this. I am not very used to working with others, as you may have noticed. There are gaps in my understanding that someone like you might be able to supplement."

"Like me?"

"Sentimental."

John couldn't help laughing gently. Words of protest rose to his lips. He never was sentimental, not before meeting Sherlock, and Mr. Sparrow. He couldn't explain it—the way Sherlock seemed to pull these feelings out of him, things he'd never felt before.

At least Sherlock acknowledged the fact that John had feelings. Maybe he wouldn't bruise them this time. "All right."

"Fine." Sherlock's smile faded, his entire demeanour unspooling into something tentative, as he gathered some of the photos and clippings, and slid them into a manila envelope. "We'll go to my flat then."

"Okay."

"Plan to stay. It will be a late night, probably. Or lots of them." His expression sobered. "You understand, the work will take priority. It must."

_Message received_. John nodded, even as he felt the inevitable wave of disappointment. He wanted Sherlock. That would probably never change. But he wouldn't allow himself to fall into intimacy with Sherlock again, not until he understood what was going on in his mind. Not until he saved him.

And that was it, he realised. The thing he must do, if he wanted to be right with Sherlock, and right in the world: he would do what Mr. Sparrow had done for Leo, would go further, would succeed where Mr. Sparrow hadn't, if he could, if it were true, that Sherlock housed a kill switch in his mind. He sighed, his nerves finally settling, for the first time since the night before. He had what he needed now. He had his purpose.

"Have you got a couch, or a big armchair? I don't need much room for a nap, but I will need to sleep at some point. I know you don't. Sleep. Much."

Sherlock watched him carefully. "I think something can be arranged."

"Good." John nodded stiffly.

They avoided the party on their way out, much to John's relief, leaving through a door to the backyard, and taking an alley that led to the far end of Eaton Square.

"Shall we get a cab?" Sherlock asked, once they were out on the street. "Main road's this way."

"I'll meet you in a bit," John told him. "I need to go home. Get some things—a change of clothes. If we're going to be up all night, I'll plan to leave directly from yours to go to work."

"Ah. Work. Indeed. Sounds dull."

"It is, actually. And will probably be more so, now that there aren't any assassins coming after me. She is gone, isn't she? Can't imagine a professional hanging about after her cover's been blown."

Sherlock's face went through a complex series of expressions, too fast for John to track. "Not sure. She did seem rather dedicated to her work. Can't be too careful. And if not her, it's safe to assume there will be others. Still, killing a doctor at a hospital, tricky that."

"Right." John wondered how Brent Chapman would react if he simply didn't show up at work tomorrow morning. It might be best, for the safety of everyone there, if he didn't. Still, the case could go on for weeks, months. He couldn't risk losing his place in the program. "Probably best if I plan to go in."

"In a while, then," Sherlock said, a smile moving over his lips.

"221B Baker Street. I won't get lost. I'll be there soon."

***

When John arrived at the building that housed his bedsit, a low-slung Daimler Limousine with tinted windows was waiting out in front, its engine purring under its massive hood. John sighed as a young woman in a chauffeur's uniform climbed out of the driver's seat, and opened the back door for him.

"Dr. Watson," said a familiar voice from inside the car. "Things will go faster if you just get in."

John leaned down, to see Mycroft Holmes sitting in the back of the car, in a striped three piece suit. He smiled, close-lipped, amused by something John didn't want to understand.

"If you're offering me a lift, fantastic. I have to get some things from my room first, if you don't mind hanging on."

"Not much point in that, I'm afraid. You've been evicted." 

"What?"

"Not for any very scandalous reason, although your landlord doesn't think particularly well of you. That room you've been living in no longer belongs to you. So, please. If you would." Mycroft gestured at the seat beside him.

John climbed in, shaking. The engine thrummed as they pulled into traffic. The Daimler was one of those cars with such good suspension, riding in it felt like cruising on a still lake.

"What's happening?" John asked.

"You have reconciled with Sherlock," Mycroft said. "Impressive. My brother seldom forgives, once he's taken offense. You must be rather special."

"So everyone keeps telling me." John watched the city go by through the tinted window. They were driving back into Central London. "Where are we going, exactly?"

"Baker Street. You're moving in."

"Sorry?"

"You've been invited, have you not?"

"Yes. Not to live, though."

"Better if you do."

John wondered why every exchange with Mycroft seemed fraught with attempts to manipulate him. "Better for you?"

"Better for everyone."

"Everyone?"

"Given that you have nowhere else to go, better for you. Better for Sherlock, too, but I think you already know that. Given the nature of his current case, I suspect, better for the people of this city."

"Oh yeah. You're civic minded, aren't you?"

The question was met by silence. John watched the faces of the people they passed on the street. They were busy with their lives. None of them had any idea of the war being fought all around them.

"And my things?"

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "Your modest possessions have been packed, and will be at Baker Street when we arrive, along with a few extra items you might be in need of."

"Does he know you're moving me in with him?"

"He's been informed."

John's heart expanded with hope. Maybe it was all better than he'd thought. "Did he agree to it? Did he ask for this?"

"He didn't object, which speaks volumes."

John looked at the leaden sky. It was heavy, threatening rain. A small space opened inside him, room for everything to be okay, eventually.

"I merely want you to be in the best possible position to look after my brother," Mycroft said.

"Why don't you look after him yourself?"

Mycroft folded his hands on his lap. "I'm afraid I'm not enough anymore. Perhaps I never have been. You've seen how he resents me."

It struck John that he wasn't the only one who worried about the state of Sherlock's mind. If John had come to the conclusion that Sherlock might have been put at risk by Moriarty, then surely Mycroft had thought the same thing. "You think he's been programmed. You think Moriarty set him up with a trigger."

"Very good. You are smarter than you look, thank goodness."

John let the insult roll off of him. Maybe he wasn't a genius, but he'd figured out a thing or two. "You think he might hurt himself, or self-destruct somehow. If he were triggered."

They passed the white facade of Barts Hospital. John wondered, with a new sense of urgency, how he would manage work. It was becoming clear that he would have to find a way to excuse himself from his next shifts. He couldn't forgive himself if something happened to Sherlock.

"Doctor Watson, my brother spent more time in the company of James Moriarty than any other of Moriarty's experimental subjects."

The car thumped over a pothole. The idea of Sherlock as an experimental subject made John's skin crawl. "Sherlock said they were friends. That Moriarty was grooming him, to be like him." Perhaps Sherlock's programming was worse than a suicide switch, somehow, or more complex.

Mycroft turned away from John, and looked out the window. The corner of his eye pinched, as if he were suffering some sudden pain. "A mind as powerful as Sherlock's, as byzantine as Sherlock's—do you imagine someone with Moriarty's ambitions could resist shaping it as his instrument? Do you think he would allow that instrument to do something as ordinary as ending itself?"

John found he was clenching his jaw. "You said London was at risk. Not just Sherlock, but London."

"It is clear that Moriarty has started a program of demonstrating his power. The authorities—the real authorities, not the Met—are concerned that he will soon move into acts of terrorism that not even the general public can ignore. Something on a much grander scale than these petty suicides."

John's heart pounded in his chest. They were nearing Baker Street now. Sherlock, and John's new life, were only moments away. "You're saying Sherlock might do something. Hurt other people."

"If one is to demonstrate one's power, one might fashion a weapon so formidable that no one has ever seen its like. If that weapon is also a person, a genius who is in the public eye as a performer would certainly draw attention, wouldn't you say?"

"What do you think Sherlock might do?"

"As much as it pains me to admit it, I have no idea. My brother's behaviour, as you may have noticed, is erratic at best."

"And how am I supposed to stop him? If he starts playing out this program?"

"My brother trusts virtually no one, and yet, in a matter of weeks, he's grown closer to you than to anyone. He invited you to work on this case, the most challenging of his career, unique because it concerns himself. He trusts you. I don't expect you to stop him, if the thing you and I both fear comes to pass, but I have resources available that can minimise the damage he causes, if he is triggered. In the meantime, all I ask is that you watch him. Be there for him. Look after him."

John shifted in his seat, wishing he were already at Baker Street, already with Sherlock. "I can't keep watch on him all the time. I have my training. Hospital shifts."

Mycroft handed him an envelope. Inside was a carbon copy of a letter addressed to Brent Chapman, apparently from the hospital at the military base at Baskerville. The letter stated that John would be completing his training there, after which he'd be given full-time employment.

"What's this?"

"A cover story. The purpose is to free your time, so you may engage in the task at hand. Sherlock's idea, for what it's worth."

John took a deep breath, and suppressed a genuine smile. "And my career?" The question was feeble, more for show than anything else. Sod his career.

"Can be continued when you are done with this."

Behind them, a car honked. The chauffeur looked in the rear-view mirror, her hand going to the seat beside her. There was the unmistakeable sound of a safety being taken off a gun. John turned to watch the car. After a long moment, it turned a corner. The safety clicked back into place, and the chauffeur returned both hands to the steering wheel.

John's heart thumped in his chest. _Jesus_.

"My gun?"

"Is among your possessions at Baker Street. How did a doctor in training come by an unregistered firearm? It must make for an amusing tale."

"It does. It's none of your business."

"Of that I am sure."

John stared at the rows of houses and shops and restaurants as they flickered past the car window. He wondered how it was possible that he could find himself in a situation that seemed so ideal, and for it to come in such a backwards manner.

This case was more than a case. It was Sherlock's life, his deepest secrets. Even if there really wasn't anything between them beyond a night of shared insanity, he wanted to help. It would have been better, if the move to Baker Street had come about more naturally, without the interference of Sherlock's condescending brother, but he would take it, and whatever happened next. He would take it eagerly, with passion and devotion.

The car turned a final corner. They pulled up outside the tall Victorian building that John would now call home.

Mycroft handed John a fresh card. Like the other one, it was white, and simple, printed with Mycroft's name. The telephone number was different. John raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

"That is my direct line. You will be able to reach me any time, at any hour of the day. It would be easier for me and my staff if you were to report frequently to me, tell me how the case is progressing, and keep me advised of any issues regarding Sherlock's safety. You will, of course, be in the employ of the British government from now on."

John tucked the card into his inside jacket pocket, smiling ruefully. He wondered if Mycroft's attempts to hire him could be considered a _welcome to the family_ , in Holmesian terms. "No thanks. I will call you if he needs you. But if I do this, I do it as a free agent."

"Nonsense. You'll require some source of income."

"Then arrange it. Give it to your brother. Slip a tenner under the flat door from time to time."

The chauffeur got out of the car, then came around to John's door, and opened it for him. John climbed out. He looked up at house. Sherlock stood in the upper window, looking down at him. John couldn't be sure at this distance, through the warped glass, but it appeared he was holding a violin.

John leaned down into the car, and stuck out his hand for Mycroft to shake. Mycroft took it, the expression on his face sour. His fingers were cold.

"Whatever you do, however you want this to play out, let's make one thing clear. I'm not working for you," John said, giving Mycroft's hand one last, firm squeeze. "I'm working for him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [It's No Game](https://youtu.be/vWTQ3vshLNY).
> 
> Many, many thank yous and blessings to everyone who commented and left encouraging notes and was still enthusiastic about this fic when I couldn't bring myself to work on it. It's been a long, weird journey back in, but here we are. I hope you like!

**Author's Note:**

> If you're unfamiliar with the 1970s glam scene, a quick and highly fictionalized but accurate for the flavour flav guide is the film Velvet Goldmine. 
> 
> The first act / first part / first seven chapters of this fic are entirely inspired by the [David: Live at the Tower Philadelphia double album](https://youtu.be/dAwwjBhXx_4), in particular the second disc. I recommend the whole thing as a soundtrack to this fic.
> 
> I'm may-shepard on tumblr. My email address is mayshepard1895@gmail.com if you want to get in touch that way.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for Width of a Circle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6497554) by [justacookieofacumberbatch (buffyholic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buffyholic/pseuds/justacookieofacumberbatch)




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